United in Prayer: How BYU football responded to 9/11
By Annie Robinson,
September 9, 2026
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When BYU players walked off the field after a 44-16 win over California on Sept. 8, 2001, the excitement surrounding the program felt impossible to ignore.A new era of BYU football was underway. First-year head coach Gary Crowton had led the Cougars to a 3-0 start and a No. 24 ranking. Brandon Doman and Luke Staley were putting up eye-popping numbers and BYU was beginning to draw national attention. A ranked matchup in Starkville, Mississippi, against No. 16 Mississippi State was next.Twenty five years later, Doman remembers the confidence inside the locker room before the season began."We had a really good football team," he said. "We had several future NFL players on that team."The players knew it, even if much of the country did not."I think the only ones that knew we were going to be good were the players on the team, the players in the locker room," Doman said.Three days after improving to 3-0 on the season, everything changed.Like millions of Americans, on the morning of Sept. 11, members of the BYU football program were glued to their televisions, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.Jeff Call, who was covering BYU football as a sports reporter for the Deseret News at the time, still remembers the unforgettable images he saw when he turned on the television that morning."The first thing I see on my TV is that sad, tragic scene of the Twin Towers, smoke billowing out of the Twin Towers," he said. "I was looking at it going, 'Is this from a movie?'"With each new update, the situation felt more serious."You knew that the world had changed forever," Call said.Duff Tittle, a member of the BYU athletic communications staff, was driving to work when a radio broadcast interrupted the music he was listening to."They interrupted the show," Tittle said. "We didn't know really what it was at first. This plane just hit one of the Twin Towers."He hurried to the office and turned on the television."We were just sitting there watching this thing like, 'What in the world is going on?'" Tittle recalled.Then the second tower was hit.Within minutes, Tittle realized this was something far different than an accident."It soon became clear, we were under attack," he said.Former BYU athletic director Val Hale came to the same realization."This was no accident. This was intentional,” he said.Jeff Reynolds, BYU football’s sports information director at the time, expected to spend the week helping generate excitement around the Cougars’ undefeated start. Instead, he spent the morning watching the attacks unfold alongside the rest of the country."That's when I was thinking, OK, sports is now going to take a second seat to everything else," Reynolds said. “And now it wasn’t about the football game.”The response around campus was immediate.“The next day when I came to the office, Susan, our office manager, had bought a huge American flag,” Tittle said. “Everybody became very patriotic, very fast.”In the hours that followed, there were more questions than answers. Flights across the country were grounded, and BYU was supposed to travel to Mississippi State that weekend. Nobody knew if more attacks were coming, whether the game would be played, or even what the next few weeks would look like."It was a gut punch to everybody in America," Hale said. "People, aside from being shocked, didn't quite know what to think.""As great a season as we were having, football became very unimportant for a little while," Tittle said."There was a lot of uncertainty that first week," Reynolds said. "People were literally scared to death, and as they should have been."Later that day, something happened that several people connected to the program still remember nearly 25 years later.Call drove to BYU football practice that afternoon unsure what to expect.As he pulled into the parking lot near the practice fields, he looked out toward the team."I remember seeing every player and every coach on their knees, heads bowed in prayer," Call said. "I thought to myself, I shouldn't be surprised by that. This is BYU. Given what has happened today, this shouldn't be a surprise."The image has stayed with him ever since."I'm getting chills saying it right now," Call said. "Just to see them kneeling together in unity and in prayer was very impactful. That affected me emotionally. It really did."Doman remembers that moment from inside the circle as a player."We all gathered up as a football team and knelt down in prayer together, all 100 of us," Doman said. "Our head coach said a prayer and prayed that all would be well. He prayed for the leaders of nations and prayed for those that lost lives, you know, families that had lost family members. And we all united in prayer.“I’d be surprised if there was a football team anywhere in the country that day that didn’t participate in some form of prayer to ask for peace,” Doman said.Reynolds remembers the same scene."I remember we started the practice with Gary calling the team up and everybody took a knee," Reynolds said. "We had a prayer."After practice, Crowton addressed the situation with reporters. "It's a hard day," he said, his voice cracking with emotion. "You feel fortunate for what you have. The players are aware of what's going on. They fought through it pretty well."A few days later, Reynolds helped arrange for a massive American flag to be brought to the practice field. The team gathered around it for a photo that later appeared as the centerfold of BYU’s next game program.For many in the BYU community, faith became an anchor amid uncertainty.“I realized that I knew exactly what (the players and coaches) were going through,” Call said. “Because I was going through it. Everyone was going through it.”Like many Americans that day, the team was searching for peace."There was nowhere else to turn but to turn to God," Call said. "We're going to trust in Him. We're going to humble ourselves. We're going to get on our knees and ask for direction and guidance and for peace."Hale called it one of the most powerful moments he witnessed during his time at BYU."It was a very sobering experience, a very spiritual experience because people realized, you know, we need God. We need God's strength and protection to get through this," Hale said. "It was just a very powerful thing to see all these big, strong athletes kneeling down, some of them with tears in their eyes."Doman felt something similar."Our football team was part of a massive family that day," he said. "It was a spiritual awakening. It was really sacred."We were a country in mourning, and our team and coaches did a great job allowing us to be part of that mourning. But our mourning directed us in faith to God and complete trust and confidence that all would be OK."Suddenly, football felt a lot smaller.“College football didn’t seem to matter that day,” Doman said. "We didn't know if that was just the beginning.”As one of the team's captains, Doman naturally found himself looking out for the players around him. But he said many of them already knew where they would turn in a moment like this. The roster was filled with older players, returned missionaries and young husbands whose faith was already a central part of their lives."We were all God-fearing men and recognized that that's where our hearts were, and that's what was most important to us," Doman said."Football is fun, football is an opportunity to do something we love to do, but it certainly isn't the most important thing," he added. "None of us wanted football to be our No. 1 identity."The attacks hit close to home for Call. His twin sons had been born just a month earlier."I remember thinking, what kind of world will my kids living in?" he said.Also, his younger brother was attending Columbia Law School in New York City at the time."We couldn't get ahold of him for a long time," Call said.Reynolds found himself feeling the same pull toward family."I just remember wanting to be with them," he said of his children. "I probably cried a few times during that day. Football and athletics and sports didn't really seem to be that big of a deal."The Cougars had been preparing for a ranked matchup against Mississippi State. Now, nobody knew when they would play again."I think some of the kids wanted to play," Reynolds said. "And then there were some that were like, yeah, maybe not. So it was really tough, but ultimately I think the right decision was made to hold off for a while."Eventually though, sports returned. "There were some who really felt strongly, America needs this," Hale said. "We need something like this, these games to bring people together."Looking back, Call believes that sports played an important role in helping people reconnect."I think sports is a very important part of reunifying and coming together," he said. "There are very few things where everyone can come together and rally behind something."Reynolds believes the return to stadiums helped people heal."People needed to go back to the ballparks," Reynolds said. "It was the venues that brought people back together.""People need sports," Tittle said.When football finally returned, Doman noticed a different feeling around the game."The United States of America is going to just forge ahead," he said. "We felt like, in a unique way, we were part of this healing rebuild of our country."Across the country, moments of silence and national anthems carried a different weight.“There was a huge amount of American pride and patriotism,” Tittle said."You can imagine The Star-Spangled Banner and what it did and how these games brought people together and rallied the troops," Hale said. "The only good thing that came out of 9/11 was that it united America."Reynolds saw that same spirit everywhere he went."Whether you're black or white or Democrat or Republican, whether you're Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, it didn't matter," Reynolds said. "Everybody came together."The season eventually moved forward. Games were played again, and life slowly settled into a new normal.BYU's game against Mississippi State was postponed until Dec. 1. The Cougars didn't play again until Sept. 29 at UNLV. Led by Doman, they earned a dramatic, come-from-behind 35-31 victory over the Rebels in Las Vegas to move their record to 4-0. BYU ended up winning its first 12 games in 2001 — a last-second 41-38 win at Mississippi State was win No. 12 in early December — and earned a No. 9 national ranking before dropping its final two games of the season. Nearly 25 years later, the memories still come flooding back quickly for those who remember.They remember the confusion. They remember the fear. They remember wondering what would happen next.But many also remember what happened that afternoon on the BYU practice field in Provo, all the coaches and players united in prayer.For Call, the memory has never faded."I'd never seen that before, a team prayer in somewhat public setting," he said. "I haven't seen it since in all the years I covered BYU football."BYU's 2001 season is remembered for victories, records and one of the best starts in program history. But for those who were there, the lasting memory has little to do with football.Instead, it is the image of a group of players and coaches on their knees, united in faith on one of the darkest days in American history.
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