Ten years ago, Humboldt State's campus and community joined the nation in grieving the tragic attack on the World Trade Center that cost nearly 3,000 lives, including those of many courageous rescue personnel.
All of American society was deeply impacted, and the sports world was no exception. With aircraft ordered grounded, travel issues and other constraints forced the cancellation of all but a few college football games scheduled for the Saturday following 9/11.
In Redwood Bowl, they played on. Menlo College made the bus trip to Arcata from the Bay Area, and lined up with the Jacks for a pregame tribute to rescue workers on the East Coast and to local emergency personnel, then a moment of silence “in support of all those touched by Tuesday's terrorist attack on America.” Then, they went ahead and did what they always do: They sang the national anthem, flipped the coin, kicked off and played in front of a smaller-than-normal crowd of 2, 634.
“Having football during that time was very therapeutic and it definitely allowed me personally to put my mind in a different place,” said former HSU defensive lineman Gabriel Jackson. “It allowed me to focus on beating Menlo College and not the national tragedy that had affected so many lives across the country.”
The normalcy that followed kickoff belied the week's anxious anticipation of the game. Nationwide, sentiments ranging from sadness to anger were often directed toward the Taliban, militants believed to be harbored in Afghanistan.
Caught in the controversy was Menlo State quarterback Zamir Amin, a native of Afghanistan. Though Amin's parents had left the country along with their 7-month-old son in 1979, shortly after the Soviet invasion.
“What we wanted to do was to respect the rest of the world for what it's going through, and to go play football,” Amin told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada following the game. “We didn't know how to react. We didn't know if we were doing something right, or doing something wrong, but we just wanted to focus on playing.
“We know the whole country was not playing, but we wanted to break with that. We just wanted to go out and play and bring happiness to our team, to our community.”
Amin, who had passed for an NCAA all-divisions single-game record of 731 yards the previous year, did just that, rallying the Oaks to an overtime win over the Jacks, who led 26-0 at halftime. He finished the game with 35 completions in 58 attempts for 427 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions.
“I had a sack and fumble recovery in the game,” along with a handful of tackles,” Jackson recalled. “It was a game in which we were winning pretty handily, but we ended up giving away a significant lead and blowing the game. We had a major meltdown, it still burns me up 10 years later. I remember trying to watch some highlights of some of the major colleges because I had some friends that played for some big schools, but there were none.”
Vivid memories remain etched in the mind of another former HSU standout, wide receiver Dustin Creager who went on to be named Great Northwest Athletic Conference Freshman of the Year following that season. Creager, who will be inducted into the Humboldt State Athletics Hall of Fame this fall, remembers the feelings of patriotism among several other emotions.
“There were several of us that had this burning desire to seek revenge and stand up for our country,” Creager said. “The talk around the team was that the game would be cancelled. We put it to a vote of players about whether we wanted to play or not. We all voted yes because we knew one goal of the Taliban was to disrupt daily life in the U.S. We were not going to let them disrupt us and we would instead honor those that helped rescue and those that died by playing our game.”
Though most schools participated in the nationwide moratorium on football, another GNAC team, Western Washington, hosted Montana Western in Bellingham. Current HSU head coach Rob Smith, then-head coach of the Vikings, recalls the contest, which ended 77-0 in favor of WWU.
“It was a tough decision, but the GNAC presidents had a conference call that week and agreed that Saturday's games should be played,” Smith remembered. “It changes your perspective on the importance of sports. But for that game, it was the right thing to do.”
