Ken Andiorio

Boston College and Rutgers were always scheduled to play this season. Boston College moved the game to Friday night on purpose. September 11, 2026. Twenty five years. Rutgers is the FBS program closest to New York City. Thirty seven of their alumni were killed that day, including a football letterwinner named James Martello. So every helmet Friday night will carry the number 37, along with the names of the people it stands for. Never Forget runs down the sides of the jersey. The striping is a tribute to first responders. Players who wear the gloves can lock their hands together and the gloves read Never Forget too. Nothing on that uniform is a design choice. Boston College honors one man. Welles Crowther was a BC graduate working as an equities trader in the South Tower. He was also a volunteer firefighter back home in Rockland County, New York. When the building was hit, he went down to the 78th floor sky lobby, where dozens of people were trapped and badly hurt, and started getting them out. He carried a woman on his back down seventeen flights of stairs. Then he went back up. He did that over and over. He is credited with saving 18 people. The survivors who got out couldn't tell anybody who he was. They didn't know his name. All they could describe was that the man leading them down had a red bandanna tied over his mouth and nose to keep the smoke out. That's how the world came to know him. The man in the red bandanna. He didn't make it out. Since 2014, Boston College has played one Red Bandanna Game every season. The bandanna pattern runs through the numbers, the sleeves and the trim. Where a player's last name normally goes, the jersey reads For Welles. Friday night is that game. So on the 25th anniversary, in Chestnut Hill, one team runs out carrying 37 names on their helmets. The other runs out wearing a dead man's bandanna.