Most emotionally charged sporting event

With last night's reopening of the Super Dome (I swear if I hear or read Home Sweet Dome again I will go postal) it got me thinking, what is the most emotionally charged sporting event you watched or vivdly remember?
Is it last night's game, the 2001 World Series just months after 9/11, the 2002 Super Bowl, for some reason I'm stuck on post 9/11 games, but I think I get my point across.
For me it is the 1999 Bonfire game between the Texas A&M Aggies and the University of Texas Longhorns. It had it all, the devestation, the emotion, and the underdogs who desperately needed a boost scoring a dramatic win over their arch rivals who were also class all the way during the game. Never forget it, even have it on tape. To me that game holds more impact than the return to the dome.
What games or sporting events stick out in your mind?

 

Game 3 of the 2001 World Series was pretty cool, especially because Bush showed up - even if I didn't like him. The crowd that night was nuts, especially with the Yankees trailing 2-0 in the series. It was one of my favorite games of that Series, even though the next two games were much more dramatic.

 

I'm going local with two moments, since everyone will write about the major sporting events.

1. The Iowa-Michigan State basketball game after Chris Street's death in a car accident in 1992. The Hawks were getting routed until Acie Earl and Val Barnes rallied the team from 17 down and sent it into overtime. Iowa went on to win, and the emotion on the Iowa bench is something that stays in my mind everytime.

2. Iowa-Ohio State (football, 1991). This is ironic to bring this up because both teams are playing this weekend in Iowa City. After the Iowa team lands in Columbus, they learned of the campus shootings back in I.C.. With the decals stripped and wearing all-black helmets, they took the field against the Buckeyes in Columbus. Iowa won, 16-9.

 

It wasn't a great game (Miami won by at least 30) and it happened about 10 days before Sept. 11 so not a lot of people remember it, but when Adam Taliaferro ran onto the field in 2001 before a PSU-Miami game, that was breathtaking.

(And no, I don't drink blue Kool-Aid.)

 

A really good non-USA centered one would be the 1956 USSR-Hungary water polo match at the Melbourne Olympics. It took place shortly after the Soviets invaded Hungary.

The match was called early due to fighting and blood in the water.

Maybe some of the oldtimers remember this. Spnited, did you cover it?

 

you beat me to it

 

There was fighting in water polo? No way!!! Why did my parents have me twenty years later????

 

Good one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_In_The_Water_match

 

Like rain on your wedding day,
Like free advice that you already paid...
Who would it thought it figures?

 

East Carolina beating Miami in Raleigh was pretty emotional. ECU was underwater thanks to Hurricane Floyd. The region still has not fully recovered from the devastation from that storm. When the Pirates won, they tore down the goalposts at N.C. State for the second time in school history.

 

I remember that one. I wasn't there, but I had some friends who lived in Greenville that were and said they'd never seen anything like it.

 

Tractor pull at the Brown County (MN) Fair... aint nothin like it for miles...