Allstate Sugar Bowl shows its endurance once again

NEW ORLEANS – It’s the start of Allstate Sugar Bowl week.

Workers were busy painting the turf inside the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Monday afternoon, just as they do every year in the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The north end zone was decorated for Clemson and the South end zone was decorated for Ohio State. The Sugar Bowl logos and that of the College Football Playoff were scattered across the playing surface for the CFP semifinal game Friday night.

But the transformation of the playing surface was one of the few parts of the annual Sugar Bowl routine that will take place essentially as it always does.

It’s game week! Check out the field being prepped in the Mercedes Benz Superdome! @ClemsonFB @OhioStateFB pic.twitter.com/83bPyhj7Pm

— Allstate Sugar Bowl (@SugarBowlNola) December 28, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has dictated that the Sugar Bowl prepare for a much different version of itself – just like all activities for nearly the last year.

“It changed not just from day to day but from hour to hour,” Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said in describing the challenges that had to be met in order to have a game, while the workers behind him put the finishing touches on the first tangible evidence that the game will happen for the 87th time.

“We probably did 20 different budgets during the course of the year,” Hundley added. “We planned and re-planned schedules.”

Normally the teams would already be in New Orleans, having arrived 24-48 hours after Christmas in order to spend nearly a full week finalizing preparations and experiencing the sights and sounds of the city.

But not this year.

Clemson is scheduled to arrive “late in the day” Wednesday and Ohio State is scheduled to arrive around 3 p.m. on Thursday – New Year’s Eve and Sugar Bowl Eve.

“We’re used to having the teams in town for six, seven nights with a lot of activities going on,” Hundley said. “This year the activities had to go away in the interest of safety, not just for the teams but for the people in the city as well.”

Hundley said the Tigers and the Buckeyes will essentially be on “lockdown” after arriving.

“Aside from coming to the Dome for their walkthroughs they’ll be in the hotels the whole time,” he said. “That’s definitely a different animal, something we’ve never experienced before, but it’s something to be expected given the circumstances.”

The Sugar Bowl had made plans for a crowd of 15,000 for the game, then 6,000 before the City of New Orleans restricted the number to 3,000.

“We respect the city’s call,” Hundley said. “We’d like more, but we’ll make the best of it.”

Each school received fewer than 1,000 tickets and the number of tickets left for locals was far fewer than the demand from long-time supporters of the game.

“We had to make some hard decisions,” Hundley said. “We’ve got a lot of long-time, loyal supporters that are not going to be able to attend the game this year and we feel badly about that, but the virus is dictating everything this year and we’ve all had to roll with it as it went.

“Hopefully fans will be watching on television and will know that we wish they were here and we’d have them here if we could.”

Hundley said the Sugar Bowl kept an eye on developments in Pasadena, Calif., which ultimately saw the other semifinal moved from the Rose Bowl to Arlington, Texas, because of California’s ban on any spectators.

Hundley said the Sugar Bowl and the city worked together on a “good and safe plan” to accommodate 3,000 fans to the CFP’s satisfaction.

The Sugar Bowl studied how the New Orleans Saints have been able to hold eight games in the Superdome this season with a similar restriction on spectators.

“The Saints have been gracious enough to share with us a lot of information as have the Superdome personnel,” Hundley said. “Everybody has worked together.”

That teamwork between various elements of the community has always been a hallmark of the Sugar Bowl, which has endured through the Great Depression, World War II and Hurricane Katrina.

“The organization has found a way to adapt and evolve to circumstances and that’s a credit to the people that comprise it and we’re doing the same this year,” Hundley said. “Hopefully we’ll be on to bigger and better things next year after we play this one.”

Hundley said a single Sugar Bowl normally has an economic impact in the New Orleans area of between $175 million and $250 million.

“That’s going to be all but gone except for the little bit of hotel business from the fans that are able to come,” Hundley said.

He added that it’s too early to speculate on whether New Orleans is given a “make-good” semifinal in the near future to make up for what has been lost with this year’s semifinal.

But for now, the fact that this game is expected to kick off as scheduled Friday night in the Superdome is another benchmark in the Sugar Bowl’s long history.

“It was important that we have this game for any number of reasons,” Hundley said, “and the fact that we’re actually having it, when you see the Rose Bowl not being played in Pasadena this year in the first time in forever, we wanted to show that we’re still here, we’re still a big-event city, we’re still a big-time organization at the top of college football and we can get it done.”