By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-02 16:14:45 | Updated at 2025-01-04 23:59:20
2 days ago
The decision to postpone Wednesday's Sugar Bowl to Thursday afternoon in the wake of a terrorist attack that killed 15 has left some Notre Dame and Georgia football fans surrendering their seats before a disappointing return flight home.
'We can't get new flights,' said Lisa Borrelli, a 34-year-old Philadelphia resident who came to New Orleans with her fiancé, a 2011 Notre Dame graduate.
Postponing the game 'was absolutely the right call,' she said. 'I completely understand.'
She said they paid more than $250 per ticket and hadn't bothered listing them for resale yet because prices were so low: 'Of course we're disappointed to miss it and to lose so much money on it, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. We're fortunate enough that we'll be fine.'
Some seats on StubHub were as low as $11 after Wednesday's tragedy as scores of fans unloaded tickets on the secondary market. Even the top seats were selling for $446 on StubHub.
Earlier Wednesday, field-level seats were going for as much as $1,700 on Ticketmaster before officials opted to postpone the game in the wake of the terror attack.
Georgia and Notre Dame fans react at the intersection of Bourbon Street and Canal Street
Some seats on StubHub were as low as $11 after the tragedy as fans rushed to unload tickets
Notre Dame Fighting Irish fans walk past the scene in the French Quarter where 15 were killed
The casualties in New Orleans occurred when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old US citizen born and raised in Texas, rammed his vehicle into a crowd of revelers in the famed famed French Quarter early on New Year's Day. In addition to those killed, more than 30 people were injured. Jabbar was killed in a firefight with police following the attack at about 3:15am along Bourbon Street near Canal Street, the FBI said.
The Sugar Bowl was then postponed one day amid safety concerns.
'Public safety is paramount,' Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said at a media briefing alongside federal, state and local officials, including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. 'All parties all agree that it's in the best interest of everybody and public safety that we postpone the game.'
Like Borrelli and her fiance, many football fans were forced to return home Thursday rather than remain in New Orleans for the postponed Sugar Bowl.
Included in that group is 72-year-old Darrell Huckaby of Athens, Georgia, who was in a hotel room overlooking the corner where the attack took place. He was asleep when it occurred, but when he woke up, he could see pink blankets covering the bodies of the dead, and later saw them being placed in bags and loaded onto trucks bound for the Orleans Parish Coroner's office.
'It was heartbreaking,' he said. 'I think the first instinct of most people this morning was wanting to be home. As important as football is to our Georgia culture, for a little while, the game just didn't really seem to matter.
'And I think there was a lot of uncertainty, and I understand,' Huckaby said. 'It took them a long time to decide on the game time and people kind of had to make decisions without all the information.'
He added that he would 'probably eat' the $360 per ticket he paid.
U.S. congressman Troy Carter (Democrat – Louisiana) said the decision to postpone the game 'was not done lightly.'
'It was done with one single thing in mind: public safety — making sure that the citizens and visitors of this great city, not only for this event, but for every event you come to in Louisiana, that you will be safe,' Carter added.
Landry said he had a message for those thinking, 'Man, do I really want to go to the Sugar Bowl tomorrow?'
'I tell you one thing: Your governor's going to be there,' Landry said. 'That is proof, believe you me, that that facility and this city is safer today than it was yesterday.'
Hundley said work was underway to 'set up a safe and efficient and fun environment' at and around the Superdome on Thursday.
The Superdome was on lockdown for security sweeps on Wednesday morning. New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick has since promised 'hundreds of officers' will be lining the city streets prior to Thursday's rescheduled Sugar Bowl.
'We are staffing up at the same level, if not more so, than what we were preparing for the Super Bowl [in February],' Kirkpatrick told NBC Today.
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno said prior to the Sugar Bowl postponement that the security perimeter around the Superdome was being 'extended to be a larger zone'
Both teams spent most of the day in their hotels, holding meetings in ballrooms.
Georgia's players bused to the Superdome for a walk-through practice on Wednesday evening. As they made their way to buses on Canal Street, fans in red and black stood eight to 10 deep behind barricades, cheering them on, phones held high above their heads to capture the scene.
Around that time, at a hotel on the banks of the Mississippi River, Notre Dame players gathered with family members in a ballroom where the Rose Bowl quarterfinal between Ohio State and Oregon was being shown on television.
Notre Dame offered band members the option of flying home on Thursday instead of attending the game, and some chose to do so.
Georgia president Jere Morehead said the university confirmed that a student was among those critically injured. Morehead said the university was in contact with the student's family.
Statements from the University of Georgia Athletic Association and from Notre Dame said both schools had accounted for all team personnel and members of official travel parties.
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno told WDSU-TV earlier Wednesday, before the postponement was announced, that the security perimeter around the Superdome was being 'extended to be a larger zone.'
'There are more police officers who are coming in,' she said.
The Superdome, which is about 20 blocks away, also is scheduled to host the Super Bowl on February 9.
The first Super Bowl after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, also was held in New Orleans, and there was a massive security perimeter for that game including street closures surrounding the Superdome and officers — including snipers — on the tops of surrounding high-rise buildings, as well as on the roof of the dome itself.
'We are deeply saddened by the news of the devastating incident in New Orleans,' the NFL said in a statement.
'The NFL and the local host committee have been working collaboratively with local, state and federal agencies the past two years and have developed comprehensive security plans,' the statement continued. 'We are confident attendees will have a safe and enjoyable Super Bowl experience.'
