Last Monday, 48 hours after Miami beat Rutgers 61-0, all the talk around Coral Gables was about Washington's upcoming visit to the Orange Bowl. But Tuesday, players and coaches watched in horror as the World Trade Center collapsed. Instantly, the team thought of Leon Williams, Miami's affable, 6'4", 220-pound freshman linebacker from New York.

The Brooklyn native's mom, Veronica Simms, worked in the WTC. She has been a technical assistant for the Hartford Insurance Company for the last seven years. Williams and his coaches at Miami placed several calls to New York to check on Simms. But no one could get through. The team rallied around the 18-year-old and began to pray.

"I told Leon, 'Don't fear the worst,' because you know how your mind can play games with you in those types of situations," said coach Larry Coker.

What they didn't know was that Leon's mom was literally running for her life. Simms, who usually takes the 4 train from her home in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, was supposed to be at work by 8:30. Only the subway conductor wasn't cooperating -- he had the train running on a 30-minute delay. Simms made her way out of the subway right after the first plane smashed into the WTC.

"I stood there for five minutes, frozen," Simms said. "I thought it was an ordinary fire." Then, she heard a thunderous blast and watched people begin running in every direction. Simms threw off her shoes and "ran like hell."

"I thought that day I was going to die," she says. In shock, she tried following the madness and running with the mob toward the South Street Seaport, a half-mile away. "People were screaming, 'Run for the water! Run for the water!' My heart was pumping so fast. I kept thinking 'I'm not gonna make it!' " Police, she said, re-routed her and she ended up running some seven miles, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge before making it home. She slammed the door to her place and instantly broke down. Simms called her baby down at Miami, who was in the middle of praying with his teammates. "He was really shook up," she says. "I kept saying, 'don't worry. I'm home now. I'm home.' "

Williams says he has calmed down. And he has checked in on his mama every night since. Her feet are blistered and sore from her seven-mile sprint and she admits the ever-present police helicopters still freak her out. "I'm still scared to death," Simms says. "But I have to get through it."

We all do.

Bruce Feldman covers college football for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at bruce.feldman@espnmag.com.