One year ago, the Duke athletic department and the Atlantic Coast Conference announced the cancellation of all sporting events scheduled through Friday because of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
A day later, the ACC and other major conferences called off all their weekend football games. On a national level, the MLB and NFL followed suit, postponing their games through the weekend as well.
At the time of the attacks, ACC commissioner John Swofford said that although he and other members schools could see the natural argument for playing sports and thus relieving stress during a hardship, the ACC schools had "thoroughly discussed the situation on their own campuses" and decided to use the time to "pray for the safety, health and recovery of our fellow Americans"
One year later, the memories from that day--that changed the nation as well as the sports community--still resonate.
"I'll talk to the team about it. We'll talk about remembering the people that were there and the effect it had on so many lives--on a lot of people at Duke." head coach Carl Franks said, who added that if the University had a home football game this weekend they would have done something at the game in remembrance of Sept. 11.
Franks also said that the football team was particularly affected because they had lost one of their former players, Rob Lenoir, in the attack. Franks said he played with and was a fraternity brother of Lenoir while they were at Duke, and that the team was planning on naming a room in the new Yoh Football Center in honor of Lenoir.
"It was a national tragedy. Who wanted to go out there and play a game under those circumstances?" said Jaymon Small, a senior and one of the football team's captains "Games can be played anytime. Games get made up all the time. Games can be moved because of hurricanes and this was way bigger than that.... It's something that no one in our generation will ever forget. It's like our Pearl Harbor."
Citing the Sept. 11 attacks as a reason for heightened security measures, Duke, as well as many other schools, made some minor changes. For the Blue Devils, the most notable one was a ban on backpacks at basketball games in Cameron Indoor Stadium, but the University also stopped the practice of allowing spectators to leave the building and then re-enter.
Across the asphalt at Wallace Wade Stadium, police and stadium officials decided to place more personnel at the entrances and check all bags entering the stadium for prohibited items.
"Increasing [security measures] was a perfect move," Franks said. "We did it. Everywhere else did it. If we didn't do it we wouldn't have looked very smart.... Football's not the most important thing in the world. We might like it to be on Saturday, but it's not the most important thing in the world."
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