Sports Legends Get Back Together to Relive a Historic Event

Tony Kornheiser doesn’t remember much from the night of Sept. 25, 2006.

Time — in this case, almost 18 years — has a way of melting details from our memory.

But he remembers one thing very clearly from that historic evening at the Superdome: The sound of the sellout crowd erupting in unison at Steve Gleason’s blocked punt.

That he will never forget.

“I don’t remember a single play in the game,” Kornheiser said. “I remember the noise. It’s the loudest noise I’ve ever heard at a sporting event.”

In the 17 years and 241 days since that historic night, a lot has happened.

Kornheiser has long since left the Monday Night Football booth, but he remains a force on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” which has aired regularly on weekday afternoons since 2001 and made Kornheiser and co-host Michael Wilbon wildly rich and popular.

Gleason, meanwhile, has since retired, started a family and seen his life derailed by a diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011.

Gleason and Kornheiser’s paths had not crossed since that fateful night in 2006. But they did on Thursday night in the cavernous main hall of Union Station in Washington, D.C., before an event honoring the release of Gleason’s new memoir, “A Life Impossible,” and a symposium for Answer ALS, a research project Gleason helped kick-start 13 years ago in the wake of his diagnosis.
But before he rendezvoused with Gleason, Kornheiser spent some time remembering the Dome-coming night and a game his ESPN broadcast partner Mike Tirico accurately called “the most significant New Orleans Saints game — ever” in his prologue before kickoff.
Like most New Orleanians do, Kornheiser remembers the build-up to the game, how the Saints were forced to play all four of their preseason games and their first two regular season games on the road to allow time for the massive renovation project at the Dome to be completed.

“There was so much emotion, and there was just so much on the line,” he said. “If you have 70,000 seats, 50 or so were season-tickets holders, and they’d been here for years. Getting back in that Dome and having that team back after being gone for a year, they were ready to just explode.”

The intense pregame musical performance by U2, Green Day and local artists like Trombone Shorty, Rebirth Brass Band and Irma Thomas only stoked the emotion higher.

“This was not a normal open to a season; there was no team (in 2005 because of Katrina), there was death, and something like 20 to 25% of the population in New Orleans had left,” Kornheiser said.

When Gleason blocked Michael Koenen’s punt on the fourth play from scrimmage, just 1 minute and 23 seconds into the game, the ESPN broadcast team of Kornheiser, Tirico and fellow color analyst Joe Theismann, wisely let the power of the emotional scene wash over the broadcast audience. They went silent for 36 seconds, a lifetime for network television.

“Bruce Springsteen said once, ‘And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be,’” Kornheiser said of the famous line in “Jungleland.” “That’s what we did. It was an unbelievable release of emotion — unbelievable.”

Kornheiser was prepared for the moment. In the days leading up to kickoff, he toured some of the city’s flood-damaged neighborhoods and saw first-hand the devastation. He remembers seeing the indelible flood lines on the houses and the spray-painted FEMA codes, indicating the number of dead inside.

“I was totally moved and reduced to rubble,” he said. “I used some of that (research material) in the broadcast. That was something that I suspect a football guy’s not going to tell. Right? I was a reporter, and that instinct is still there. I mean, I was borrowing from the thing I did for a long time, and it worked on that level (during the broadcast).”

Calling on his reporting experience as a longtime journalist at the Washington Post, Kornheiser calmly and professionally put the moment into context for viewers during the broadcast.

“You could not script this any better than what just happened for the New Orleans Saints,” Konrheiser said. “… For those people who look to the New Orleans Saints as something that will uplift them, uplift this city, uplift the entire Gulf region, they just had it. … It’s a football game for the Atlanta Falcons. But for people in here and people watching that root for the New Orleans Saints, it’s more than a football game, and that (play) delivered on everything they could have hoped for.”

Kornheiser lasted only three seasons in the Monday Night Football booth. But he will always be proud of that night and that moment. Rightfully so, it will go down in history as one of the most iconic plays and memorable nights in NFL history.

Later Thursday evening, Kornheiser briefly shared some of these memories of the night with Gleason, sparking a wide grin and a twinkle of the eyes.

Gleason, using his eyes through the interpretation of his caregiver, Kyle Olasin, thanked him for coming to the event.

Gleason’s wife, Michel, sent Kornheiser off with a hug and a signed, complimentary copy of Gleason’s book. Before heading home, Kornheiser leaned in and exchanged Gleason’s customary “Fo to Fo” salutation with him.

“This was tremendous,” an emotional Kornheiser said.

The next day, as Kornheiser recorded PTI in his home studio in Washington on Friday afternoon, a new item had been added to the set. Behind Kornheiser’s right shoulder, strategically positioned for the national viewing audience to see, a copy of “A Life Impossible” stood on prominent display.

It was Kornheiser’s silent tribute to Gleason, his way of saying thanks for the memories.