Notre Dame and Georgia fans abandon New Orleans after terror attack postponed Sugar Bowl as ticket prices plummet

The decision to postpone Wednesday’s Sugar Bowl to Thursday afternoon in the wake of a terrorist attack that killed 15 people has led some Notre Dame and Georgia football fans to give up their seats ahead of a disappointing return flight home followed.

“We can’t get any 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 match “was absolutely the right decision,” she said. “I understand completely.”

She said they paid more than $250 per ticket and hadn’t yet bothered to put them up for resale because the prices were so low: “Of course we’re disappointed to miss it and lose so much money on it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. We’re lucky that we’re doing well.’

Some seats on StubHub were as low as $11 after Wednesday’s tragedy, when dozens of fans unloaded tickets on the secondary market. Even the top seats sold for $446 on StubHub.

Earlier Wednesday, field-level seats were on sale for as much as $1,700 on Ticketmaster before officials opted to postpone the game in the wake of the terror attack.

The victims in New Orleans occurred when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old American citizen born and raised in Texas, drove his vehicle into a crowd of partygoers in the famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day. In addition to the deaths, more than thirty people were injured. Jabbar was killed during a shootout with police after the attack at about 3:15 a.m. along Bourbon Street near Canal Street, the FBI said.

The Sugar Bowl was subsequently postponed a day due to safety concerns.

“Public safety is of the utmost importance,” Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said during a media conference alongside federal, state and local officials, including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell. “All parties agree that it is in the best interests of everyone and public safety that we postpone the game.”

Like Borrelli and her fiancé, many football fans had to return home Thursday instead of staying in New Orleans for the postponed Sugar Bowl.

That group includes 72-year-old Darrell Huckaby of Athens, Georgia, who was in a hotel room overlooking the corner where the attack occurred. He was asleep when it happened, but when he woke up he saw pink blankets covering the bodies of the dead, and later saw them being placed in bags and loaded into trucks headed to the Orleans Parish Coroner’s office.

“It was heartbreaking,” he said. “I think most people’s first instinct this morning was that they wanted to be home. As important as football is to our Georgian culture, for a while the game didn’t really seem to matter.

“And I think there was a lot of uncertainty, and I understand it,” Huckaby said. “It took a long time for them to determine the playing time and people had to make decisions without all the information.”

He added that he would “probably eat” the $360 per ticket he paid.

US Congressman Troy Carter (Democrat – Louisiana) said the decision to postpone the game was “not taken lightly.”

“It was done with one thing in mind: public safety – ensuring that the citizens and visitors of this great city, not just for this event, but for any event you go to in Louisiana, will be safe,” said Carter. added.

Landry said he had a message for those who are thinking, “Man, do I really want to go to the Sugar Bowl tomorrow?”

“I’ll tell you one thing: your governor will be there,” Landry said. “That’s proof, believe me, that that facility and this city are safer today than they were yesterday.”

Hundley said Thursday that efforts are underway to “establish a safe, efficient and fun environment” in and around the Superdome.

The Superdome was closed Wednesday morning for security screening. New Orleans Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick has since promised that “hundreds of officers” will line the city’s streets ahead of Thursday’s rescheduled Sugar Bowl.

“We have a workforce at the same level, if not more, than what we were preparing for the Super Bowl [in February]Kirkpatrick told NBC Today.

Both teams spent most of the day in their hotels and held meetings in ballrooms.

Georgia’s players traveled by bus to the Superdome on Wednesday evening for a walk-through practice. As they made their way to the buses on Canal Street, fans in red and black stood eight to ten deep behind the barricades to cheer them on, holding their phones high above their heads to capture the scene.

Around that time, Notre Dame players gathered at a hotel on the banks of the Mississippi River with relatives 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 to fly home Thursday instead of attending the game, and some chose to do so.

Georgia President Jere Morehead said the university confirmed a student was among those seriously injured. Morehead said the university was in contact with the student’s family.

Statements from the University of Georgia Athletic Association and Notre Dame said both schools had already counted 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 “expanding to a larger area.”

“More and more police officers are coming,” she said.

The Superdome, about 20 blocks away, will also host the Super Bowl on February 9.

The first Super Bowl after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was also held in New Orleans, and there was a huge security perimeter for that game, including street closures around the Superdome and officers – including snipers – at the tops of surrounding tall buildings. on buildings, but also 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 worked with local, state and federal agencies over the past two years and have developed comprehensive safety plans,” the statement continued. “We are confident that participants will have a safe and enjoyable Super Bowl experience.”