Laura Rutledge reveals what led to new Sugar Bowl start time between Notre Dame, Georgia

ESPN’s Laura Rutledge had all the latest this morning in an update on how today’s plans came to be for the rescheduled playoff quarterfinal with the Sugar Bowl.

Rutledge, who has been in New Orleans for the bowl and since been covering it following the terror act in the city on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, gave an update on how it all went in setting the game between No. 2 Georgia and No. 7 Notre Dame for today at 4 p.m. ET. She said it was a large conversation considering who all was involved in it yesterday afternoon.

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“Well, it was a lot of discussion that got to that point – first off, the discussion between the Sugar Bowl officials, the College Football Playoff, the teams, the FBI, the city of New Orleans,” Rutledge noted this morning on ‘Get Up’.

“That was a long meeting that happened yesterday midday when they were trying to figure out exactly what they would do.”

However, with the semifinal to follow just a week away, the Bulldogs and Fighting Irish wanted kickoff to be earlier than the original time would have been last night at 8 p.m. ET. It wasn’t what anyone wanted to be considering but, with the football aspect of it, the programs preferred to play as soon as they could do so on Thursday.

“The reason why they landed at 4 p.m. eastern, three central is because there is an extremely quick turnaround for whichever team wins this game into the Orange Bowl, which is a week away so less time to prepare for the team that will play Penn State in that game,” Rutledge said.

“As you said so well, all of that pales in comparison to what happened here and the tragedy, certainly, that occurred. But these teams did have to think about the schedule and doing what’s best for the athletes and everybody involved, right,” said Rutledge. “The postponement of 24 hours? At first, we thought that meant it would be a true 24 hours, it would be a game happening tonight but we started to get word that both teams, especially, were pushing toward the earlier start time, as early as possible start time, for today.”

As for the game this afternoon, Rutledge said it has received even more increased security. As she put it per law enforcement in NOLA, the Caesars Superdome is now as safe as anywhere in the city today following those events.

“There was a lot of information about the extra security here at the Superdome. I can tell you that’s been beefed up big time,” said Rutledge.” It is a second layer of security. I actually just went through it to get into this building and you go through the initial check and then you go through another full check – almost like a TSA-type situation where you’re going to put your bag through everything. That was something that they implemented as soon as they found out we would be playing this game. They wanted to add as much security as possible.”

“I had one law enforcement official tell me the Superdome may be the safest place in New Orleans today,” Rutledge added.