Wednesday September 12, 2001

NEW YORK - Six major-college football games, including No. 13 Washington's visit to No. 1 Miami on Saturday, have been postponed, and suspension of this week's entire schedule of Division I games was being considered following terrorist attacks in New York and Washington yesterday.

Among the other games postponed were Arizona State at No. 14 UCLA in the Rose Bowl and San Diego State at No. 21 Ohio State, both of which had been scheduled for Saturday.

Three games schedules for tomorrow night also were postponed: Penn State at Virginia, Ohio at North Carolina State and Texas Tech at Texas-El Paso. The Red Raiders-Miners game was tentatively rescheduled for Saturday night, pending a final decision on whether games will be played that day.

"A lot of things happened (yesterday) that put things into perspective," Washington's star defensive tackle Larry Tripplett said. "Many people's lives were changed forever. Keep in mind that we're just playing a game, that's all it is."

"The University of Miami takes this action out of respect for the people who gave their lives in (yesterday's) tragedy," said University of Miami athletic director Paul Dee.

Also, Brown at San Diego, a I-AA game set for Saturday, was canceled. School officials said the game would not be made up.

Earlier yesterday, the commissioners from all the I-A conferences, including the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern, discussed their options for staging this weekend's games in a conference call hours after the attacks.

"We're going to monitor and carefully evaluate everything, and definitely make a decision (today) on our weekend football games," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said, speaking only for his own league's games, and before the Washington-Miami postponement was announced.

He added, "The commissioners will be talking to their institutions on conference calls, and then we will talk again and make a collective decision."

In Division I, there are 116 games scheduled tomorrow through Saturday, including two other major matchups in the state of Florida - No. 8 Tennessee at No. 2 Florida and No. 10 Georgia Tech at No. 6 Florida State.

The final decision on whether to play, though, could rest with the federal government, not the commissioners. The government most likely will determine if teams can travel by air and if it's safer for large crowds to gather at stadiums nationwide.

"It may be out of our hands," Tranghese said. "There are a lot of issues, emotional ones. Kids flying, playing in large venues with a lot of people and if the government says do something, we do it."

NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said the NCAA would cooperate with any executive orders issued by President Bush.

The ACC suspended all athletic events through tomorrow - Virginia and North Carolina are ACC members; the Pac-10 postponed all conference competition through the weekend. Arizona State and UCLA were set to open conference play.

Dee hopes the Washington-Miami game can be rescheduled for Nov. 24 - an open date for both teams. The Ohio-NC State game was rescheduled for Nov. 24.

San Diego State and Ohio State will be made up on Oct. 20 and UCLA and Arizona State will try to reschedule for Dec. 1. A new date has yet to be set for Penn State-Virginia.

In the other game scheduled tomorrow night, Kentucky Wesleyan is at Tennessee-Martin. Colorado State is at UNLV on Friday night. No decisions have been made on those games.

The Virginia-Penn State game was set to be televised by ESPN, with the Nittany Lions' Joe Paterno needing one more win to tie Bear Bryant at 323 career wins - the most by a major college coach.

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said his players were distraught when told of what had happened earlier in the day.

"They seem to be really taken aback, as you see their posture, their nervousness and their reaction," Tressel said. "Kids were crying in the locker room."

Dempsey said conferences and individual schools have authority themselves to postpone or to play all regular-season games.

"The games themselves are insignificant in the face of what has happened today," Dempsey said. "Our focus is entirely on the safety of student-athletes, athletics personnel and fans. We urge schools to make sound decisions about proceeding with contests today and in the coming days."

Oregon State running back Ken Simonton said he was walking his dog when a neighbor told him about the attacks that leveled the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York and severely damaged the Pentagon.

"I just kind of froze," he said. "It was kind of hard to swallow then, but it's just the times we live in."