NEW ORLEANS — Thirty-six hours after a deadly attack rocked the heart of one of America’s most vibrant cities, New Orleans went back to doing what it does as well as anywhere: Hosting a major event.
It happened 19 and a half hours later than planned, in front of a smaller-than-expected Caesars Superdome crowd and in an environment that felt neither normal nor abnormal. But it happened. And it delivered a performance Notre Dame fans awaited for three decades.
Notre Dame used a swarming defense and a 54-second scoring burst to top second-seeded Georgia 23-10 in Thursday’s Sugar Bowl, the last quarterfinal of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff. The seventh-seeded Fighting Irish (13-1) won a school-record 13th game and ended three decades of futility in major bowl games to advance to play sixth-seeded Penn State in the Jan. 9 Orange Bowl semifinal.
The game’s status was uncertain a day earlier as authorities investigated an attack in which a man sped his truck down Bourbon Street, hitting New Year’s revelers early Wednesday morning. The attack killed at least 14 people and injured dozens of others. FBI officials said the man, a U.S. Army veteran described as an ISIS supporter, also put two explosives in the area in what they now believe was a solo act without accomplices.
By Thursday morning, New Orleans attempted to carry on.
The sticky tables at one of the city’s most beloved institutions, Café du Monde, were packed with fans sipping café au lait and dusted with powdered sugar from hot beignets. A brassy band boomed across the street from idyllic Jackson Square. The doors remained open at St. Louis Cathedral.
Two men sold white Sugar Bowl shirts on opposite corners of Canal Street, a heavily trafficked thoroughfare teeming with tourists. In between their tables stood two dozen cameras and tripods pointed at Bourbon Street. The iconic road was still blocked off at 10 a.m., but a search and rescue truck replaced the coroner’s van that sat in the same spot 24 hours earlier.
“Half price,” one shirt salesman barked. “Twenty bucks.”
Business, he said, was so-so.
It was worse on the secondary ticket market, where get-in prices were half as much as they were on New Year’s Eve. Late Thursday morning, a pair of Sugar Bowl tickets ($27 apiece) was cheaper than an admission for two at the Audubon Aquarium a mile away.
As the day wore on, the big-game buzz built in one of the country’s best big-game cities. Bourbon Street reopened about two hours before kickoff. Fans crowded balconies. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry blared.
“We’re gonna enjoy ourselves …” Gov. Jeff Landry said in a news conference leading up to the game. “Right now, this is one of the safest places on earth.”
Security was intense; one entrance line for club seating stretched to 200 fans. Once one passed the bomb-sniffing dogs and their wagging tails, the barricades and sheriff’s mobile command center, the metal detectors, the men and women in Homeland Security jackets and the guard perched in an if-you-see-something-say-something stand, it felt like a College Football Playoff game in one of America’s favorite destinations. Golden Dome helmets, Bulldog chains and Mardi Gras-style beads all made it into the Superdome just fine.
But even inside the stadium, the tragedy was an unavoidable, unfortunate part of the backdrop. There was a pregame moment of silence. Though all 68,400 tickets were sold, the bowl announced an attendance of 57,267. Commemorative footballs on merchandise tables had the original date (Jan. 1) instead of the actual one (Jan. 2).
Still, there was football.
Notre Dame’s defense dominated, as it has all season. The Irish held Georgia to 10 rushing yards in the first half and finished with nine tackles for loss.
The defining stretch came over 54 seconds of game action straddling halftime. Notre Dame made a 48-yard field goal, forced and recovered a fumble on Georgia’s offensive snap, scored on a 13-yard touchdown pass from Riley Leonard to Beaux Collins and added another touchdown when Jayden Harrison returned the opening kickoff of the second half 98 yards into the end zone. It was the first kickoff return for a touchdown Georgia had allowed since 2018, and it helped turn a 3-3 tie into a 20-3 Irish lead.
The Bulldogs (11-3) tried to rally. Quarterback Gunner Stockton — starting in place of the injured Carson Beck — threw a 32-yard touchdown pass to Cash Jones six minutes into the third quarter to trim the deficit to 10. Georgia advanced into Notre Dame territory on its next two drives but failed on both fourth-down attempts, and the Irish shut down the Bulldogs from there to win a major bowl game for the first time since the 1994 Cotton Bowl.
As Georgia’s pursuit of a third national championship in four years ended, Notre Dame’s chase for its first title since 1988 continues.
Required reading
(Photo of Riley Leonard: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
