Correct, but a pro football game on a Sunday night might get 9/11 publicity. Particularly if there are simultaneous disasters in 7 cities.
True, but he'd only get to do that once before U.S. defenses were fully galvanized and mobilized, so I think he probably decided that the next step had to go up to the level of violence necessary to give him his shot at a U.S. capitulation, or at least to score a clear strategic defeat of the United States. Defeating the United States would, in what I suspect is his thinking, reverse the tide of European and Christian defeat of Islamic expansion that began to run after the battles of Lepanto and Vienna 500 years ago.
After Osama's prospective victory over the U.S., his successors could begin to think again about expanding the world of Islam to swallow Europe, and he could realistically challenge the House of Saud for the protectorship of the shrine cities of Mecca and Medina -- and lay the foundations for eventually driving the Jewish state into the sea and recovering control of Jerusalem.