Red Bandanna Game: Why Boston College vs. Rutgers Is About Far More Than Football

Eighty-five college football games featuring an FBS program will be played on Friday and Saturday of this weekend, a sign that fall is finally here and that America’s most-watched sport has fully returned to dominate public consciousness and television screens everywhere. That’s not to mention the 14 NFL games that will follow on Sunday and Monday, as the league kicks off another season.

Not a single one of those games will be as emotionally gripping as the one that will take place in Chestnut Hill, Mass. on Friday, Sept. 11.

On the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Boston College will host its 13th annual Red Bandanna Game to honor Welles Crowther, a 1999 graduate and former Eagles lacrosse player. Crowther, who was working as an equities trader in New York City in 2001 and serving as a volunteer firefighter, helped at least a dozen people to safety from the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. While doing so, he wore a red bandanna, a gift from his father Jefferson that he received as a boy, which he would later wear underneath his lacrosse helmet at Boston College, to cover his face from the debris. Crowther died later that day while assisting first responders when the South Tower collapsed. He was 24 years old.

Twenty-five years after his death, Boston College football will honor him Friday night in its first home game of the 2026 season against Rutgers.

“This game] is what BC’s all about. Welles Crowther embodies what Boston College is all about,” Eagles football coach Bill O’Brien tells Sports Illustrated. “It’s about being a man for others and so it’s going to be a special night.”

Welles Crowther, a former Boston College lacrosse player who had a trademark red bandana, was working in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

This is the story of how he led people to safety after terrorists struck the World Trade Center. pic.twitter.com/Q7gouyqlwz
— ESPN (@espn) September 11, 2025

O’Brien, who was born in Boston but was the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech in the fall of 2001, admits that he didn’t quite grasp the full significance of the Red Bandanna Game until he arrived at BC in 2024. However, like many around the country, 9/11 hit him close to home.

Raymond Rocha, one of O’Brien’s closest friends and football teammates from his college days at Brown, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and died in the attacks. That same day, his parents, John and Anne, were flying back from a trip in Europe only to have their plane diverted to Nova Scotia when the Federal Aviation Administration issued a complete closure of American airspace. O’Brien’s wife Colleen was working as a lawyer in Atlanta at the time and had to be evacuated from downtown because no one was quite sure if another major metropolitan area would be the next target.

Football was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind, including O’Brien’s. Georgia Tech was preparing for a game against Florida State, which would later be canceled, and practiced on 9/11, a Tuesday ahead of the Friday scheduled game.

“It was not a great practice because there was a black cloud over everything,” O’Brien remembers. “We didn’t end up playing again for another three weeks cause we had a bye. It was a crazy time and it was a sad time. Everybody remembers where they were and what they were doing.”

That’s also the case for Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, who will stand on the opposite sideline from O’Brien on Friday night. The school’s football facilities are less than 40 miles away from Ground Zero and 37 Rutgers alumni died in the 9/11 attacks. Schiano, who had just begun the first season of his first stint as the head coach of the Scarlet Knights, still remembers vividly what he saw from campus on that Tuesday.

“This is very real to us. Just outside this door, we were standing on the practice field and you could see the smoke on the horizon 25 years ago,” Schiano said in a press conference Tuesday. “We had coaches and players who didn’t know where their wives or their mothers or their fathers were. Anybody who grew up around here or lived around here lost people they loved.”

As we take the field on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we honor all of those whose lives were lost on that tragic day, including our 37 @RutgersU alumni.

We remember. We honor. We will never forget. pic.twitter.com/XtzQ7fjdh6
— Rutgers Football 🪓 (@RFootball) September 7, 2026

Rutgers is the closest FBS program to New York City, which played into Boston College asking the school to be a part of the 2026 Red Bandanna Game. The matchup was then scheduled specifically for the anniversary, setting the stage for an even more powerful scene. Schiano and O’Brien have known one another for some time and discussed the significance of this year’s game briefly over the summer.

But while both head coaches recognized what this year’s Red Bandanna Game would represent, it’s important to note: not a single player that will put on a uniform on Friday night was born before 2001. It’s led O’Brien to put extra emphasis on explaining the importance of what’s being played for.

Ahead of his team’s appearance in the Pinstripe Bowl in New York City in 2024, O’Brien had the team meet Welles’s mother Alison at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan. Alison has been pivotal in preserving her son’s legacy through the Welles Remy Crowther Charitable Trust and has worked closely with Boston College to create the Red Bandanna Game, as well as an accompanying 5K run and a social and the “Red Bandanna Project,” an emotional learning curriculum for students. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump posthumously awarded Welles with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that can be bestowed upon an American civilian.

O’Brien has had Alison speak with the team before the Red Bandanna Game each year and credits the university for fostering the relationship with the Crowther family. It’s in part why he feels such a responsibility to impart onto his players exactly what, and who, they’re playing for on Friday.

“It’s something I really enjoy doing because I love the tradition of the game,” O’Brien says of telling his players Welles’s story each year. “I love what the game stands for. So I try, every single day the week of the game, to educate the team.”

In 2014, Boston College upset #9 USC in the first official Red Bandanna game 🦅 pic.twitter.com/A6sKLvNYa7
— CFB Kings (@CFBKings) September 10, 2026

It’s trivial, in the greater context of what Welles Crowther represents, to dwell on the actual results of football games that invoke his memory. And yet there’ve been some unquestionably special outcomes in the Red Bandanna Game, dating back to the inaugural matchup in 2014. Boston College, then coached by Steve Addazio, upset No. 9 USC for its first win over a top 10 opponent in a decade on an emotional night that honored Crowther’s parents.

O’Brien’s first Red Bandanna Game was similarly epic, under the lights in the pouring rain, “a good rain,” the BC coach recalls. “I can’t explain it.”

Next: Growing Up 9/11—A 2001 Baby Reflects on the Attacks That Changed Sports Forever

Down by a field goal with less than five minutes to play against Michigan State, the Eagles marched down the field and Thomas Castellanos connected with Lewis Bond for a 42-yard touchdown with 1:28 remaining. Boston College defensive back Max Tucker would come up with the game sealing interception 52 seconds later and the students in attendance, carrying red bandannas, stormed the field to celebrate.

There’s no rain in the forecast for Friday night. There shouldn’t be much in the air at all except for tens of thousands of red bandannas, swirling in the night sky to remember Welles Crowther.

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