STARKVILLE, Miss. ( WJTV ) – Mississippi State University (MSU) hosted one of the most important football games in American history nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

A new MSU Films documentary, “9/20,” is about the 2001 Southeastern Conference (SEC) football game between the Bulldogs and the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. The documentary will make its national television debut on the SEC Network at 7:00 p.m. CT on September 11. The film will be available for streaming at films.msstate.edu following the broadcast.

In the documentary, MSU filmmakers examine a watershed moment when Americans turned to sports as a momentary escape from tragedy and a return to normalcy.

“There was a great deal of enthusiasm moving into the 2001 football season. MSU had beaten Texas A&M in the ‘Snow Bowl,’ an all-time classic Independence Bowl game. We were on the national radar as a program on the rise, and we won our first game that year. Then, you get to the morning of Sept. 11, and everything related to athletics is no longer important,” said David Garraway, University Television Center director and co-producer of “9/20.”

More than 40,000 people filled Davis Wade Stadium on September 20, 2001, and ESPN’s national broadcast captured numerous moments of patriotism and solidarity.

“Once you actually got on that field and held that enormous American Flag … nobody cared if you were a Republican or a Democrat, or a Mississippi State fan or South Carolina fan,” said former Bulldog quarterback Wayne Madkin. “At that particular time, it was bigger than all of us. And we were Americans.”

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