A quarter century after 9/11, we’ve gone from ‘Never Forget’ to ‘Never Let Them Forget’

We will ask them because that's what we do. On fields and diamonds from Lewiston, Maine, to Los Angeles, we will ask them.

What do you remember? Where were you when the planes hit the towers? What does Sept. 11 mean to you?

The answers to the questions are changing.

For most of the last 25 years, we have asked athletes to help in remembering the attack on our nation on Sept. 11, 2001. Now we are beginning to ask the generation that can't.

Many of the players participating in the ceremonies weren't around 25 years ago. Those who were born may not be old enough to have the vivid recollections of an older generation.

Nevertheless, they'll stand along sidelines and baselines during moments of silence, wear commemorative patches and listen while names and stories from 2001 are recalled. The NFL will stencil "Never Forget" this weekend in end zones across the country.

The reality is 25 years later, we are transitioning from "Never Forget" to "Never Let Them Forget." We are moving from a time of remembrance to a time of teaching.

My wife and I were driving home from a holiday weekend trip to Washington D.C. recently when we were passing the exit for the Flight 93 National Memorial. We got off the highway on a whim and drove the nearly 20 miles of winding roads through the Laurel Highlands region to visit the crash site.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but the scene was overwhelming. The memorial is incredibly well done. It was fairly crowded during our visit perhaps because it was Labor Day and so close to the anniversary. As videos of that day played on a loop in the visitors center and park rangers roamed both inside and outside answering questions about that day, I surveyed the room's demographics and was struck by how many younger visitors had no vivid recall of the events.

Time eventually does this to all of the world's defining moments. Every generation has one, whether it was John F. Kennedy's assassination or the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sports just provide a clear illustration of the evolution.

Tom Brady was a 24-year-old backup quarterback when the planes struck the World Trade Center. He was early into his second NFL season and didn't even take over the starting job until later that month. Now he's retired and carried all those Super Bowl rings with him into the broadcast booth, clearing the way for league MVPs Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Both were in kindergarten on 9/11. Brock Purdy and Trevor Lawrence were infants. Caleb Williams and C.J. Stroud weren't even born yet.

Similarly, most current major leaguers were children or weren't born when Mike Piazza slugged that memorable home run at Shea Stadium 10 days after the attacks. Someone has to explain to them why the crowd sounded different, that it was the first sporting event in New York after 9/11 and why Piazza rounding the bases became an enduring image. A regular-season home run in late September is still being discussed a quarter century later. They need to understand why.

That's how this works. We inherit the responsibility of the explanation.

We need to explain that baseball legends like Bob Feller and Ted Williams' career numbers aren't as impressive as they could've been because both men sacrificed three years of their prime to go serve in World War II. Williams later lost two more seasons to the Korean War. Hank Greenberg entered the Army after winning his second MVP and lost three full years and parts of two others to war. All of them American heroes who happened to also be outstanding baseball players.

Legends have their stories stitched into the fabric of the game. Preserving those rich histories is easier than most American institutions because sports is obsessed with lineage. We retire numbers and hang banners and build statues. We rename roads and put names on stadium walls, celebrate anniversaries and invite old teams back to cheer them again.

Now an entire generation of professional athletes has essentially cycled through an entire career since Sept. 11.

For years, asking players about that day produced stories. They remembered practices being canceled or sitting in a college lecture hall watching televisions. They called parents and other loved ones. They remembered the eerie sounds of silence with no planes in the sky and the uncertainty surrounding whether games should be played that weekend. Maybe they couldn't appreciate the gravity of the situation, but certainly grasped the despair we all felt.

Now we have the first generation coming of age with no knowledge and no memories of their own, which perhaps makes ceremonies of remembrance more necessary than ever.

The next generation hearing about Sept. 11 is doing so within a misinformation age that didn't exist 25 years ago. The same phone that shows archival footage from that morning, within a few swipes, offers a theory insisting what they're seeing isn't real or doesn't tell the whole truth.

Social media has made history infinitely more accessible and considerably more dangerous to navigate. Conspiracy theories that once lived on the margins find new audiences through algorithms. Artificial intelligence makes manipulating images, voices and video easier than ever. Distance from events creates a vacuum for alternative versions of the same story.

Within the last couple of years, we've had athletes question if Babe Ruth really existed , insist Michael Jackson is still alive , deny that humans built the Egyptian pyramids and question the existence of space . Just this week, the San Francisco 49ers' Dre Greenlaw wondered if Antarctica is a lie and the Pittsburgh Steelers' DK Metcalf told our Jonathan Jones he believes Antarctica is another world and that there is another civilization inside Earth . Of course, there are a plethora of the standard flat earth and moon landing conspiracies, too.

All of which makes the transition from remembering to teaching about 9/11 so important. Those of us who lived through that day have an obligation to preserve history. We know what we saw. The generation behind us has to decide whom to believe about what happened before they were here. That's why ceremonies still matter.

Sports cannot teach the history of Sept. 11 in 60 seconds before kickoff, but there aren't many settings left that can accomplish something on this scale. A history teacher can only explain the attacks to the 25 students in class and a documentary can only reach those who seek it out and choose to watch. An NFL game has a captive audience of 70,000 people in one building and millions more watching at home. It has the power to interrupt the entertainment long enough to declare that this matters. A moment of silence is an invitation to learn the history.

For 25 years, we asked athletes where they were. Soon there won't be anyone left on the field worth asking. That's when the responsibility shifts to those who were there.

When a player asks what the moment of silence is for, when a child asks why the stadium suddenly stopped moving, it's our turn to answer.

Never Forget was our promise. Never Let Them Forget is what we owe them.

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