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There was a pretty darn good college football game played yesterday. THE ATHLETIC’s Matt Baker enthusiastically provided details:
Notre Dame used a swarming defense and 54-second scoring surge 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 their first major bowl since the 1994 Cotton Bowl — to advance to the Jan. 9 Orange Bowl semifinal against sixth-seeded Penn State.
If you happened to miss seeing it as I did, it’s understandable. The game was unfortunately being played in New Orleans as this year’s Sugar Bowl, which was supposed to round out a New Year’s Day tripleheader for the ESPN family of networks. But as Baker was compelled to add in his ensuing paragraphs, that didn’t quite work out as planned:
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 ice chests with explosives in the area in what they now believe was a solo act without accomplices.
FORBES’ unlikely duo of pop culture expert Mary Roeloffs and the New Delhi-based Siladitya Ray were providing updates on the ongoing investigation throughout Thursday, which included some uncomfortable details:
President Joe Biden said Thursday the truck belonging to the suspect involved in the deadly New Orleans terrorist attack Wednesday contained a remote detonator for unused explosives planted a few hours before the attack, which he said the suspect planted himself.
Biden said he was briefed by the FBI, which informed him the suspect’s truck contained a remote detonator to set off explosives planted within two ice chests in the French Quarter hours before the truck attack (the explosives were later identified and rendered safe by authorities).
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick on Thursday afternoon confirmed Bourbon Street had been reopened after the FBI determined Shamsud-Din Jabbar acted alone in ramming a truck into the New Years crowds in the city’s French Quarter.
That’s right, Kirkpatrick was only able to tell the world the coast was clear just as the Bulldogs and Fighting Irish were about to kick off at the Caesar’s Superdome, located mere minutes away from the site of the attack.
It was a serious enough series of events to have attracted the concern of a top state official, as THE HILL’s Lauren Irwin shared yesterday:
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) said she believes the Sugar Bowl should have been postponed until Friday as New Orleans grapples with the aftermath of the New Year’s Day terror attack. Murrill, speaking Wednesday evening to NBC’s Lester Holt, was asked about the College Football Playoff game between the University of Georgia and University of Notre Dame, which was scheduled for Wednesday night .
“You know, [it’s] not my decision, but I would like to see it delayed at least another day,” she said. “If they asked my opinion, I would tell them that I think it was a wise decision to delay it at least a day.”
“This is an active crime scene, and they just finished removing some of the bodies and they still haven’t removed all of them,” she said in the interview from Bourbon Street.
“I still think that we probably need to wait an extra day,” Murrill continued, noting there is no further threat to the community.
Murrill may have the power to enforce state law, but she doesn’t usually encounter forces as formidable as college football and, for that matter, her state’s signature event in that de facto religion doesn’t usually encounter forces as resolute as ESPN. As Hill continued:
Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley announced in a press conference Wednesday that the college football game between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed 24 hours — but eventually a Thursday afternoon start time was decided upon, about 19 hours after the originally scheduled kickoff.
Right again. Even the full length of moratorium was truncated . With the three other teams in the semifinals to be played next Thursday and Friday night already determined, the concept of delaying the game as long as Murrill may have desired was simply not a viable option, lest yesterday’s winner be further compromised in terms of preparation time. But a game that was supposed to have a prime time window, a game with implications beyond yesterday, was relegated to a hurried shoehorn on a work day. And it’s because of something as crucial and as dramatic as this, which the partnesr trumpted in a June press release:
The TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, TaxSlayer and ESPN announced today that the 80th Annual TaxSlayer Gator Bowl will be played on Bill Gay Grounds at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville on Thursday, January 2, 2025 at 7:30 pm EST and will be televised nationally on ESPN.
“We’re thrilled to celebrate these two outstanding teams going head-to-head in the 80th annual TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. This is a historic year for the big game, and it marks our 14th as the title sponsor. It’s an honor to be a part of this tradition once again and to connect our brand to such a prestigious event enjoyed by football fans nationwide,” said Jamie Saxe, CEO of TaxSlayer.
So on a Thursday evening where the NFL finally did not offer direct competition for the first time since September, fans thrilled to the crucial Duke-Ole Miss showdown which turned into a draft audition for the much-traveled quarterback Jaxxon Dart, who led the Rebels to a 52-20 blowout over the Blue Devils that wasn’t even as close as that score might indicate.
Could the Gator Bowl and the proud partiers have been moved to Friday, perhaps? Hell no, because ESPN’s commitment to Bowl Season extends to tonight, where the Duke’s Mayo Bowl showdown between Minnesota and Virginia Tech awaits. And this afternoon was off limits because of something called the First Responders Bowl, a Dallas-based battle between juggernauts North Texas and Texas State–a game which ESPN owns a piece of as part of 17 of these increasingly meaningless post-season “classics” that fill their schedule with decently-rated live content at a less competitive time of year. Which they’ve now extended into the first week of January because of the expanded College Football Playoff which has moved two games once part of New Year’s Day themselves–the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl–to January 9th and 10th, respectively.
So apparently television–and particularly ESPN–really was calling yesterday’s shots. While the still technically President of the United States was updating us in real time, trying to disspell the false and incideniary narrative of broken borders allowing someone named Jabbar to set foot in our Country that the incoming President was spewing over his vibrant social media cesspool, crowds–at least the ones determined enough to shake off these distractions–were filing in for a football game that actually kicked off five hours earlier than initially indicated.
Would it be disingenous to have at least asked if the game could have been played without fans, much like they were when COVID was a factor and the likes of ESPN was determined to provide made-for-TV live entertainment because–you know, the money?. I’m pretty sure all of those amplified fake crowd noises and background music were sitting on a hard drive somewhere where the Superdome officials could have gotten their hands on it–heck, given the fact they hosted Saints games, they might have had one of their own ready to go.
And considering we’re entering tax season, one only wonders how much of a schedule TaxSlayer might be committed to on the ESPN/Disney family of networks that may have tipped the scales toward them keeping the Sugar Bowl/playoff quarterfinal out of the prime time window it clearly merited?
Sure, there’s reason to be celebratory today, assuming what the FBI and our current president are telling us are the whole truth. Baker attempted to capture the return to normal atmosphere that emerged as yesterday afternoon evolved:
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 by 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, 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.
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: football.
As it always will be. Come hell, high water, or prior sponsorship commitments.
Courage…