Local SWAT teams patrol outside the Caesars Superdome ahead of the Sugar Bowl NCAA College Football Playoff game in New Orleans on Jan. 2, 2025. Butch Dill/AP Photo
NEW ORLEANS—Georgia and Notre Dame fans packed a plaza adjacent to the Superdome and enjoyed music under clear skies—under 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 in Austin, Texas. “Coming in they searched my bag thoroughly. So I felt like, OK, they’re really paying attention.”
Horsey was in New Orleans with her husband, Joe, a 48-year-old Georgia graduate, and their teenage children, Jack and Zoe.
They extended their stay after the game, originally scheduled for Wednesday night, was postponed because of an attack by a man who drove a pickup truck into crowds in the French Quarter, killing 14 New Year’s revelers before police killed the attacker in a shootout. Dozens more were injured.
Notre Dame beat Georgia 23–10 in a game that concluded without incident amid the enhanced security.
“We can see the presence up on the rooftop,“ Horsey said, pointing at a sniper above Champions Square. ”So, I kind of felt like this is probably one of the safest places to be in the city.”
Joe Horsey said the pregame crowd was larger than he expected but he also found the “energy lower than a normal football game.”
“You could sense the musicians trying to get people riled up. People are kind of going through the paces, a little bit in shock, but trying to make the best out of the day,” he said.
It also seemed to Horsey that opposing fans were being a little more polite to one another than at a typical game.
“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.”
Flags were at half-staff outside nearby government buildings in memory of those killed in the attack, which has been labeled by authorities an act of terrorism.
The attack occurred on Bourbon Street, which runs through the heart of the French Quarter and is famously lined with bars, restaurants and clubs, near the corner of Canal Street, a main downtown artery.
The crime scene, which was gradually being cleared so it could be reopened to the public, is about a mile’s walk from the Superdome.
