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John Russell

John Russell's sports column appears Sundays in Steamboat Today. Contact him at 871-4209 or e-mail jrussell@SteamboatToday.com.

The Denver Broncos rallied in the fourth quarter and won the game, but nobody really cared a few minutes after we pulled ourselves out of bed Tuesday morning.

It should have been a magical day. The Broncos posted a 31-20 win against the New York Giants in the first regular-season game played at Invesco Field at Mile High. The team also saw the return of running back Terrell Davis, who ran for 101 yards on 21 carries and went more than 7,000 yards for his career during the Broncos’ victory.

But on Tuesday morning, none of that seemed to matter much anymore.

The previous night, I yelled at the television as the temporary referees — the regular guys were on strike — bungled several calls, at least in the eyes of a Broncos fan. It also was the night fan-favorite Ed McCaffrey suffered a season-ending injury on national television.

The next day I turned on the television hoping to get a bit of good news about one of my favorite players, but it only took a few minutes to realize that none of that really mattered anymore.

For most of us, the world changed on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and it will never be the same. After the attacks, sports took a backseat to reality, and people cared more about what was happening at Ground Zero than they did about what was happening at the 50-yard line.

The players on the opposing team didn’t seem quite as annoying as they had the day before, the referees’ calls weren’t nearly as important as the victims in the World Trade Center, and the players on the field seemed a little more like humans than the super heroes we thought they were before the attacks.

It wasn’t that we didn’t care about sports anymore; it just seemed that things like freedom, respect and compassion were more important. The firefighters and policemen who ran into the buildings hoping to carry victims out became the real heroes for a few months instead of an athlete carrying a ball.

It’s hard to look at the world the same way when someone is out to destroy everything you’ve been taught and everything you believe in. It’s hard to look at it the same way after watching planes fly into buildings. It’s hard to look at it the same way after watching terrorists threaten our freedom with a few unthinkable acts.

Sure, a lot of things have changed in our country since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We spend more time in security lines at airports, and there are more security lines everywhere we go. As a country, we are constantly looking over our shoulder wondering where the next sucker punch will come from and who will be behind it. Luckily, we’ve been there to stop it.

But 10 years after 9/11, many things have returned to normal. But that day also reminds us all that winning, losing and the games we play are rarely as important as we think they are.