Friday marked 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and across the sports world there were solemn remembrances as well as celebrations of the heroes that stepped up that day.
Trey Wingo used the day to call up Bob Ley, with whom he hosted the 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and look back on the surreal, traumatic, and life-changing day, and how they almost didn’t go on with the show.
“As I’m driving into work that day I’m like, what am I even going to talk about today? What could remotely matter?” Wingo said. “I remember we got into the offices that day and everyone was sort of just thinking about what could we do, what’s available, what’s this. I was like, ‘Hey maybe we should just turn over all of our resources to ABC News, give them everything.'”
Wingo remembered a meeting with Ley and producer Norby Williamson, where they discussed whether or not the show should air that night.
“I was like, I don’t think we should do a show. I think it would be disrespectful. All this stuff. Because I was overwhelmed,” Wingo said.
Ley was on the other side of the debate.
“I remember you sat dawn and said ‘Look, here’s what I think. Obviously this is a really traumatic day and we don’t know what’s going on, but our job as the show of record’ — which is what we thought that the six o’clock SportsCenter was at that time, it was the show of record of what was going on in sports that day — you said, ‘We need to chronicle this so people can understand, and have a benchmark to know what happened on that day.'”
Wingo concluded by admitting that Ley, and ultimately SportsCenter, made the right call to go on air.
“In hindsight, I was 100% wrong and you were 100% right.”
From there, Ley and Wingo continue to share memories from the day itself and the days that followed, both confronting the strangeness that comes with watching something so visceral slowly become a piece of history.
They also remembered the sports moments that brought the country together in the aftermath of the attacks, namely President Bush’s first pitch at Yankee Stadium and Mike Piazza’s monster home run for the Mets.
About Tyler Lauletta
Tyler is a editorial contributor at Awful Announcing, with previous stops at Sports Illustrated and Business Insider during his career covering sports in digital media. He is, begrudgingly, a Truster of the Process and general Philly sports sicko.