Monday, September 24, 2001

At Stadiums, Colleges Stress Security and Patriotism as Sporting Events Resume By WELCH SUGGS There were Marines and "missing men" at the U.S. Naval Academy on Saturday. Patriotic T-shirts at Texas A&M University, by the thousands. Firefighters got in free at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and the University of North Texas. With the resumption of most sporting events over the weekend, colleges tried to find appropriate ways to honor those killed and those who responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. Flags were still at half-staff, television networks showed the singing of the national anthem instead of cutting away to commercials, and stadiums played special audio and video tributes over loudspeakers and on scoreboards. Colleges also took additional security measures at their stadiums, with many banning coolers and backpacks, and searching everything bigger than a coin purse. Almost every host institution last weekend requested and received a temporary flight restriction over its stadium from the Federal Aviation Administration, much to the relief of athletics administrators, some of whom have been lobbying for years for bans on the small airplanes that tow banners over stadiums. The Naval Academy apparently was the only Division I-A institution to require fans to pass through metal detectors on their way into a stadium, causing the stands to be less than half-full when the game with Boston College got under way. Under the watchful eyes of Marine guards with machine guns, the crowd saw a Navy fighter-plane flyover -- a game-day staple -- with a different twist: Instead of the four planes flying over in formation, one peeled off and the other three continued in the "missing man" formation, a tradition usually reserved for military funerals. In College Station, Texas, a group of Texas A&M students sold 38,100 T-shirts and turned the three decks of Kyle Field red, white, and blue for a game against Oklahoma State University. The campaign raised $150,000 for the New York Firefighters 911Relief Fund and New York's Fraternal Order of Police. A&M's conference foes at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln did something similar Thursday night for a game against Rice University, passing out placards to fans to form a giant "U-S-A" in one grandstand. At Colorado State University, which played host to San Diego State University Saturday, university workers painted a giant purple ribbon on a hillside overlooking the stadium. Athletics officials are taking much more care to protect their stadiums against any kind of large-scale attack. Many facilities were closed to the public all week, and most colleges went over their venues with bomb-sniffing dogs before letting fans into games. And athletics directors whose games attract many thousands of fans remain worried not just about their own facilities, but also about how to deal with another major national event, such as another attack or the invasion of Afghanistan. It took officials from Division I nearly three days before everyone decided to call off football games scheduled for the weekend that followed September 11. When asked how he would handle such an event if he found out about it 30 minutes before kickoff, Joseph R. Castiglione, athletics director at the University of Oklahoma, responded with a long pause. "Wow, that's a tough one," he said. "If it was the morning before a game, we could handle it, but 30 minutes? You're already under way at that point. I think we'd have to just go ahead." Even with 10 days to recover from the events of September 11, however, many football players admitted yesterday that they weren't entirely focused on the games they were playing. "Before the game, all I could think about was running out onto the field with the flag," Brian Welch of Virginia Tech told reporters after the Hokies' game against Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Welch's father, Kenneth, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut in 1984. "Football will come and go, but stuff like that stays with you." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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