When Auburn walked into Syracuse’s JMA Wireless Dome on Sept. 22, 2001, the setting carried far more weight than the scoreboard ever could.
The 42,784-seat building - known as the Carrier Dome until 2022 - is one of college football’s rare fully indoor stadiums, the kind of place that can rattle opponents when the Orange are rolling. That day, though, the noise had a different edge. It was late September in upstate New York, still warm outside and even warmer inside a packed arena that felt less like a football venue and more like a gathering place.
Just 11 days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Syracuse was set to host Auburn in the first college football game in New York after the tragedy. The atmosphere was somber and patriotic all at once, with more than 40,000 fans waving mini-American flags during a pregame ceremony built around unity.
New York governor George Pataki addressed the crowd before kickoff and delivered a message that fit the moment.
“They have been able to break our hearts, but haven’t been able to break out spirit,” Pataki said in his speech. “This will continue to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
The Syracuse band followed with “New York, New York,” “God Bless America” and the national anthem, and the ceremony left a lasting mark on those who were there. Tommy Hicks, who covered the game for the Mobile Press-Register, said the mood in the building was one of shared relief and connection.
“People were just really happy to be able to get together again,” Hicks said. “I remember the national anthem took on much more meaning than it would before any other game.”
The trip itself felt different for Auburn from the start. Security was tightening around air travel, and then-head coach Tommy Tuberville said the team’s flight came with an unmistakable reminder of the times.
“Our flight was one of the first commercial flights allowed into New York airspace after the 9/11 tragedy,” then Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville told AL.com in a statement through his office. “We had F-16 military planes on each wing, and I knew our country’s air travel had changed forever.”
Tuberville, now a United States Senator representing Alabama, tried to keep his team locked in, but the broader reality was impossible to ignore. Jeris McIntyre, a wide receiver on Auburn’s 2001 roster, said plenty of players felt the nerves.
“It was a lot of anxiety for a lot of guys,” McIntyre told AL.com. “Some already didn’t like to fly anyway, but kind of knowing the circumstances, there was some anxiety from not everybody, but a lot of guys.”
McIntyre still remembers exactly where he was when the attacks happened. He was leaving class and heading to Auburn’s football facility to get taped up before practice when he saw the news. Inside the training room, the TVs were on and everyone in the room was trying to process what had just unfolded.
At that point, Auburn had just beaten Ole Miss 27-21 at home and was preparing to play Nick Saban’s LSU team. That game was postponed after 9/11, which pushed Auburn’s first post-attack game to New York, the state where the deadliest strikes had taken place.
“The conversations we had during practice that week were about more than X’s and O’s. We were playing to bring morale back to our country,” Tuberville said. “That’s a lot of weight to put on college kids, but our team carried it with a maturity beyond their years.”
Syracuse had its own star power, led by defensive end Dwight Freeney. The Orange were talented enough to beat Auburn on a normal day, and they played like a team feeding off the moment. Freeney delivered the biggest individual performance, finishing with two sacks and two forced fumbles in Syracuse’s 31-14 win.
McIntyre said the building had a different kind of electricity that day.
“That Carrier Dome was always rocking, but it was just something different that day,” McIntyre said. “They had a good team, but it just seemed like a lot of things from the outside were pointing towards the Orangemen having a good day.”
For those inside the dome, the result was almost secondary. The game came to symbolize something larger: sports offering a place for people to gather, breathe and feel connected again after a devastating national tragedy.
McIntyre, now Auburn football’s director of high school and alumni relations, said the memory still stands apart 25 years later. Hicks feels the same way.
“The national anthem at Syracuse,” Hicks said, “it’s going to be hard to top that one as far as just a sense of togetherness and camaraderie and kinship as a patriot, as a citizen of this country.”
Auburn lost, but the final score never defined what happened that day. Tuberville said it remains a point of pride for the way his team and staff handled an impossible setting.
“Though we didn’t end up winning that game, I will always look back on that historic matchup as a small moment that helped bring smiles back to people’s faces during such a dark time,” Tuberville said. “Twenty-five years later, I’m extremely proud of the way our 2001 Auburn football team and staff showed up not only for themselves, but for the whole country on September 22, 2001, in Syracuse, New York.”
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