Fresno State was riding high, but the Bulldogs, and the world, stopped on 9/11

Pat Hill was in a staff meeting on that day and at that early hour. It was a big week for Fresno State. The Bulldogs had beaten teams from the Big 12, Pac-10 and Big Ten to open the 2001 football season. They won at Colorado and at No. 23 Wisconsin and in between was a victory over No. 10 Oregon State, which had set off a party the likes of which Bulldog Stadium had never before seen.

It was raucous and rollicking, the goal post in the south end zone coming down and then carried up the ramp and out of the stadium on the shoulders of delirious fans.

Hill had a team ranked 11th in the nation. His quarterback, David Carr, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated hitting stands that week. The headline: “Fresno? Yep, Unheralded Fresno State is knocking off college football’s big boys.”

Utah State was next for the Bulldogs, an opponent with little standing. But each victory added weight to the next game, at least on the outside, and the Aggies were next in line. So Hill ran that Tuesday, Sept. 11 meeting, was discussing practice plans and what not when his assistant opened the door to the staff room and walked in.

There were tears in her eyes.

“I think we’re at war,” she said, though nobody could quite grasp those words or their magnitude until they went into an adjacent room where there was a TV.

Together, they watched … stunned.

American Airlines Flight 11, hijacked 15 minutes into a flight to Los Angeles from Logan International Airport in Boston, had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As smoke and flames poured from the 93rd to 99th floors, United Airlines Flight 175, also headed to Los Angeles and also out of Boston, hit the South Tower.

The iconic towers would come down; the South first, at 6:59 a.m. Fresno time, then the North a short time later, 7:28 a.m.

American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon and United Flight 93 was crashed by hijackers into a field in Pennsylvania as passengers fought for control of the aircraft.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

“I think we’re at war … that’s what she said,” Hill said, a few days before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the terrorist attacks on America.

Getting through the haze of 9/11

It’s odd, the things that come back. Hill, who led the Bulldogs to 112 victories in his career and to an 11-3 record that 2001 season, remembered air travel, how completely different it was before Sept. 11, and the flight out of Wisconsin after the Bulldogs had hit 3-0.

“I used to get in the cockpit on takeoff and used to enjoy sitting up there with the pilot,” Hill said. “I remember we were flying out of Camp Randall and it was a really cloudy day and after about 1,000 feet we were above the clouds. I can remember saying to the pilot, ‘God, it’s so beautiful and peaceful up here …’

“Little did I know three days later there was no peace in the skies.”

Hill focused on what was in front of him. As the attacks unfolded he told the Bulldogs’ assistant coaches to take a break, 30 minutes. Call home, check on family. He did the same. He called his wife, Cathy. “It was unbelievable,” Hill said. “We tried to get a grip on what was going on.” The break ended up being longer than half an hour, but they didn’t, couldn’t, sit there and watch the television all day. Hill also had a football team, college kids 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, and there were meetings and a practice scheduled.

How does one deal with that?

It wasn’t about football, at that point. It was New York. It was Arlington, Va. It was that field in Pennsylvania. “Those brave passengers that took that plane down,” Hill said, pausing briefly. “Unbelievable …”

As the Bulldogs players filtered in, the mood was somber, Hill said. Classes on campus had been canceled, and most had watched coverage of the terrorist attacks on television.

And, as the day went along, there were questions with few answers.

The Pac-10 had voted Tuesday afternoon to postpone its conference games scheduled for that Saturday, but other conferences including the Western Athletic Conference had yet to make a call.

Just in case, or just as a break from reality, the Bulldogs practiced. “Tuesday’s a work day in the Bulldogs’ office, and we went to work,” running back Paris Gaines told The Bee that day.

The following day, Fresno State and Utah State announced that their game at Bulldog Stadium would be played as scheduled, even though five games involving WAC teams were postponed and several others across the county were scratched.

By Thursday morning the Bulldogs’ game was off, too, and by the end of the day all 58 Division I-A games scheduled for that Saturday had been postponed due to the terrorist attacks.

The NFL had postponed its games on the coming Sunday and Monday. Major League Baseball was dark for six days, returning on Sept. 17.

Fresno State would resume play on Sept. 22 at Tulsa, its WAC opener.

The Bulldogs and 9/11

Before all that was decided, Hill had a program to run. As players made their way in, he and the assistant coaches were there, to talk, to try to answer questions.

There also was a team meeting. Hill said he doesn’t remember much about it, and he is not alone.

“That day, obviously everything was disoriented,” defensive back Vernon Fox said. “I don’t remember if I went to class or what happened, but I remember we had that team meeting. We all went over to the Duncan Building.

“There was a guy on our team who was from New York, I remember that, him being concerned about his family and those things. All I can remember about it, it was super quiet. The emotion had kind of gone out of the room and I don’t know that there was a whole lot that was actually said. I don’t remember any particular conversations or any players expressing themselves. But I do remember we went in there and Coach addressed the team. They made themselves available in terms of emotional support and whatever was needed.”

There was, safety Cameron Worrell said, so much going on.

“You had no idea what was going to happen from minute to minute or what the threats were or what we were able to do,” Worrell said. “It was chaotic. We were flying about as high as you could fly, and then football becomes irrelevant in a matter of minutes. It literally is the last thing anyone was thinking about.”

Hill, sitting in the stands at Bulldog Stadium last week as the 2021 Bulldogs prepared for the game at No. 11 Oregon, said that 2001 team handled it well.

“Like me, they were in shock that something like that could happen to our country, and the magnitude that it happened,” he said. ”There had been mass shootings and there had been Columbine and things like that, but never an act from a terrorist group like this. That was very difficult to understand.”

That 2001 Fresno State team was stacked – Carr would go No. 1 to the Houston Texans in the NFL Draft and several others would play in the NFL including Worrell and Fox, defensive end Sam Williams, wideout Bernard Berrian and tight end Stephen Spach.

It was a mature team, with a sound group of seniors on both sides of the football. Carr was in his final season. Gaines was a senior, as were wideouts Rodney Wright and Charles Smith. On defense, there was Alan Harper, Fox, Anthony Limbrick.

It also was a Pat Hill team. He was in his fifth season, had recruited them all to Fresno State.

“The biggest question everybody was asking was, ‘What are you going to do about the game on Saturday?’ Hill said. “The national media wanted to know what we were doing. We had just beaten Wisconsin and had moved up to a high ranking. We were on the cover of Sports Illustrated and there were so many positive things going on, but that was completely out of our minds. That had nothing to do with what was going on in the country.

“I just said, ‘That’s not up to me. I’m going to leave that to the discretion of the people who are way higher than me. But we will do whatever is necessary in our preparation for a game, or if there’s not a game. It really wasn’t in our hands. We had no say in it, and didn’t want a say in it.”

The 3-0 start just stood still, frozen in place, like much of the nation in the days after 9/11.

The Bulldogs eventually got back to football, beating Tulsa, then Louisiana Tech and Colorado State. They got to 6-0 and as high as No. 8 in the national rankings before running into the nemesis, Boise State.

It was a chance to help a wounded nation, as it was for the NFL, for MLB. It was important to Hill, and to the Bulldogs. “He felt that we would have the ability to help people heal a little bit and bring people together and show some unity or create some unity, kind of like you saw across the country when sports returned,” Worrell said.

In the days after 9/11 questions did come, obvious yet indecorous and unbecoming as they might be at that point.

“People tried to ask the question, ‘Doesn’t this take away from what your football team has done?’ And I just said, ‘No. No, it hasn’t at all,” Hill said.

“There are more pressing questions right now than what our football team is doing.’”

This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.