Fans gear up, turn out for Sugar Bowl in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS — Ticketed fans in Georgia and Notre Dame gear packed a plaza adjacent to the Superdome and enjoyed music under clear skies — and the watch of snipers on rooftops — before filtering into the stadium for Thursday’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl.
“It was a lot of fun. It felt safe,” said Shannon Horsey, a Georgia fan in her 40s who lives Austin, Texas.
“Coming in they searched by bag thoroughly. So I felt like, ‘OK, they’re really paying attention.’”
Joe Horsey, a Georgia graduate, found the pre-game crowd larger than he expected, but the “energy lower than a normal football game.”
Meanwhile, Horsey found opposing fans were being somewhat more polite to one another than usual.
“SEC football can get nasty on game day and can get a little raucous,” he said. “But there’s a little different sense of civility and that there’s bigger things than football.”
The New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street injured dozens and killed 14 people. The attacker also died.
