New Orleans Bowl remains important piece for city

Sporting events are synonymous with boosts in tourism annually for New Orleans.

From the Allstate Sugar Bowl to the Bayou Classic, fans descend in droves upon our city and provide valuable financial assets to the area. In a given year, there are men’s and women’s Final Fours and even an occasional Super Bowl. Of course, there have been NBA All-Star games in recent years as well.

When the New Orleans Bowl came into being in 2001, a new entity emerged on the scene. It arrived at a critical time on the calendar, a time when tourism is very light and hotel occupancy, other than for New Orleans Saints home games, is at far less than full capacity.

The debate as to whether the ties to the Sun Belt Conference and Conference USA are valuable or not is a healthy one.

On Saturday, you could not help but juxtapose what was going on in the Cure Bowl in Orlando with what was happening with the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

The stands at Camping World Stadium were mostly empty on a dreary central Florida afternoon for Tulane and UL-Lafayette. The announced crowd of 19,066 was small and the actual attendance appeared to be less than that. What if the two Louisiana schools had played indoors, in-state, with one school in its hometown and the other just two hours away?

Of course, we saw that matchup in 2013 and saw a good game.

The 2018 R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl was, unfortunately, anything but a good game. It had an announced crowd of 23,942 and there were nowhere near that number of fans in the stands.

Appalachian State drilled Middle Tennessee 45-13 in a game that was never really a game Saturday evening.

Zac Thomas accounted for a total of four touchdowns as the Mountaineers won their 11th game and posted their fourth consecutive bowl victory. It is a program on the rise, despite losing its coach, Scott Satterfield, to Louisville. Appalachian State did not miss a beat under Interim head coach Mark Ivey.

The Mountaineers defense had six sacks and came up with a pair of interceptions in a superb effort.

Ivey and his staff let everything hang out, with offensive coordinator Shawn Clark resorting to trick plays with great success as wide receiver Mark Williams threw a pair of touchdown passes. That’s what bowl games are for!

The Blue Raiders, whose stock was soaring a month ago, finished the season losing three of its last four games. It was no match.

The 32-point margin was the largest in the history of the bowl game.

New Mountaineers head coach Eliah Drinkwith takes over Monday and he inherits a very good situation. Appalachian State figures to remain quite good, returning a host of outstanding players for 2019, including Thomas, its leading rusher and top wide receiver.

No doubt that had Tulane and the Ragin’ Cajuns played in New Orleans, the crowd would have been substantially larger. The 2013 game played here between the two rivals drew an announced crowd of 54,728.

It is much the same discussion about when LSU comes to the Allstate Sugar Bowl in a non-playoff situation. LSU will deliver the fans like no other school in the country but not so much of the tourism dollars.

That said, the bowl game was created to fill a void in tourism at a much-needed time and when you have two out-of-state entities participating, you get tourism dollars for restaurants, night life and hotels.

Simply put, the R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl is good for our city and economy. Kudos to the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation for its continued efforts in making the game and fine events surrounding the game both entertaining and viable.