Yet the attacks touched almost every American on a personal level, and those in the sports world were not immune. From the coach's son who escaped the burning towers to the skier whose cousin died in one of the plane crashes to the baseball player whose son was born that day, Sept. 11 lives on in the hearts of many athletes in a very intimate way.

COACH'S SON: Tim Coughlin still makes the drive from New Jersey into Manhattan every weekday for work. It never feels routine.

"I don't relax until the end of the day, when I'm in the car, through the tunnel and close to home," Coughlin said. "I know this is still a big-time target. I haven't relaxed in five years."

Coughlin's father, Tom Coughlin, was coaching the Jacksonville Jaguars at the time of the attacks. They happened on a Tuesday, game plan day, the busiest day in an NFL coach's workweek.

"I think that, emotionally, my temperament changed a bit," Tim Coughlin said. "Not at first. But like three months after. I came to question things, get a little bit angrier in the way things were handled in some regard. I guess I became a little distrustful. It gets hard for me around that date, what's happened, and what's unfolded since then."

He thinks about moving away from the hustle and bustle and memories of New York someday. But at 34, and still an up-and-comer in the bond trading business, Coughlin can't yet call all his shots. He is now closer to family, ever since his father moved back to the area to coach the Giants.

Tim said Tom Coughlin was already well attuned to his family before the terrorist attacks. It's an image few outside the coach's inner circle see. But Sept. 11 sharpened the focus a bit.

"I think he's able to look out beyond a little bit better. Not a ton. But without a doubt, there were some sensitivities created around the circumstance," Tim Coughlin said. "He realized how close this came to being a terrible tragedy for his family."

In the days following the attacks, Tom Coughlin didn't want the focus to be on himself or his son — not with the huge number of people whose kids and husbands and loved ones hadn't made it out of the towers. Still, even then, the no-nonsense coach offered a small window into his heart: "You get someplace and you thank God for your blessings," Tom Coughlin said that week.