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From Tallahassee to Miami, the usually bustling game-day streets, stadiums are dormant.
By ANTONYA ENGLISH
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 16, 2001
GAINESVILLE -- It was supposed to be the biggest weekend in college football this season, and the state of Florida was scheduled to dominate center stage.
The Sunshine State was set to host three games featuring five of the nation's Top 10 teams: No. 13 Washington at No. 1 Miami, No. 8 Tennessee at No. 2 Florida and No. 10 Georgia Tech at No. 6 Florida State.
But that was before Tuesday morning when terrorists hijacked four planes, crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands, and forcing college football to take a back seat to the real world.
In an unprecedented move, all Division I-A games were canceled or postponed, leaving fans and players in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Miami pondering the week's tragic events and missing their favorite sport Saturday.
"I'm a huge college football fan," said FSU freshman cornerback Dominic Robinson. "I was so excited for this weekend for the games going on, not just our game, but Miami-Washington and Tennessee-Florida. I was so excited to see those games. I was going to tape them and see them when I got home. They're not going on; it's going to be weird. I usually wake up in the morning and turn on the TV and there it is, College Gameday."
University Avenue in Gainesville was supposed to be filled with a sea of orange.
Orange and white. Orange and blue.
But this was no ordinary day.
Inside the stadium near what would have been kickoff time, one man ran the steps for exercise, while a few fans walked the sidelines and sat in the seats, staring blankly at the empty stadium.
Lisa Morgan and her family got tickets from friends in Port Richey. Even with the game canceled, they decided to make the trip to see Morgan's daughter, Becky, a UF student. As she left the Gator souvenir shop at the stadium, Lisa Morgan agreed the game should have been canceled.
"We were actually surprised they were going to play when they said they were still going to play (Wednesday)," Morgan said. "With everything going on, it was the right thing to do."
Becky Morgan works at Tijuana Flats, a burrito company one block from the stadium. She said the mood has not been the same among students since Tuesday's attack.
"It's dead," she said about Saturday's crowd. "It's definitely dead. It has been a totally different atmosphere."
In the bars and restaurants in Tallahassee, the mood was similar.
At BW-3, a popular restaurant on Tennessee Street near campus, fewer than 20 people had patronized the restaurant by noon.
"Normally, Saturday game day, we're either very close to or we're turning people away to stay under the fire code," BW-3 manager Warren Baucom said. "We have about 300 people as our fire code. I probably have two or three times as many employees working, and the dining room would be full by now. I don't think we've ever had (a Saturday) this quiet when it was football season. Even when Florida State was off, there are so many other games on that people would come in to watch, whether it was Florida or Miami to root against them."
The same was true at the Purple Porpoise, the Gainesville bar across from Florida Field frequented by fans for years. Ten people were there at 3 p.m.
"It's normally a madhouse, especially for Tennessee," said Heather Lee, a UF sophomore who works at the bar and chose to play music Saturday instead of having every TV on national news. "Tennessee is one of the more popular games to look forward to -- for team popularity and general money-making."
In Miami, the gates to the Orange Bowl were chained and padlocked. An area usually delegated for parking was home to a neighborhood pick-up softball game, another lot home to five area school buses.
At the Official Gator Sportshop, located inside Florida Field, clerks spoke of the contrast between a normal game day and Saturday.
"(On game day), you can't even move in here," said May Suek, a sophomore from St. Petersburg. "We'll have people lining up all the way outside. But not today."
There was one interesting customer at the store, a Tennessee fan who was seen driving around town in a black truck with his Vols flag waving.
"We just talked to a guy who was up here from Knoxville," said Ryan Barousse, a UF sophomore and store clerk. "He had tickets; I don't think he knew they weren't playing. Normally, it's crazy here on Saturdays. People were disappointed, but they didn't talk about it much."
The disappointment spread across the cities, from fans to business owners.
"I was looking forward to a pretty big weekend," said Ted Giordano, a 24-year-old FSU senior. "I was excited for it, all this talk about Georgia Tech being able to beat Florida State this year because Florida State has such a young team. I figured Florida was going to whup up on Tennessee. I wasn't alive when they canceled all the other kinds of sports before. It's a little different (this weekend)."
Players and coaches took things in stride. Florida coach Steve Spurrier gave his players the weekend off and encouraged them to go home to be with their families. FSU coach Bobby Bowden said he likely would take film home and do a few talk shows.
"I'm going home to Americus (Georgia) with my mom and my dad, to sit there and celebrate my birthday on Saturday and talk big trash about anything I can think about," said defensive end Alonzo Jackson, who turned 21. "Since the situation presents itself, I'm going to go and spend time with my family because I hardly get to see them."
Kicker Xavier Beitia, a former Jesuit standout, said: "Obviously, what happened is very sad, but at the same time, it gives us players time to rest, to heal and let our bodies get back to normal."
Despite their disappointment, fans understood the games were not as important as they seemed before Tuesday's events.
"I had tickets to the Georgia Tech game, but it is perfectly understandable out of respect for the country that that would be canceled," said Stephen Dixon, a Tallahassee Community College student. "The game has been rescheduled. I am just going to have to go to it when it's cold now."
- Correspondent Alex Abrams contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.