Louisiana AG Liz Murrill continues to hammer decision to play Sugar Bowl Thursday after terror attack

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill doesn’t believe New Orleans is ready to host the Sugar Bowl later Thursday, just one day after a tragic “act of terrorism” struck Bourbon Street in the early morning hours on New Year’s Day.

During a Thursday morning hit on FOX & Friends, the state’s top lawyer doubled down on her previous opposition to the city hosting the College Football Playoff national quarterfinal between No. 2 Georgia and No. 5 Notre Dame at 4 pm ET from the Caesars Superdome. The stadium is located just a few blocks from the site of Wednesday morning’s terrorist attack on Bourbon Street.

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The Sugar Bowl was originally scheduled to kick off at 8:45 pm ET Wednesday night, but was pushed to 4 pm ET Thursday after lengthy discussions between bowl exectutives, ESPN, the participating teams as well as state and federal officials.

But even that postponement wasn’t enough for Murrill.

“I would have probably at least postponed it until Friday,” Murrill said Thursday morning on FOX & Friends, via journalist Aaron Rupar. “But I think they have secured the city and, you know, it’s OK, I guess, if they’re going forward with it. But I would probably at least delayed it until Friday.”

When a FOX host asked Murrill why she wasn’t comfortable with the game being played Thursday, the Louisiana AG cited the victims, after 16 died and more than 35 were injured when Texas resident and U.S. citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar drove a rented pickup truck down a crowded Bourbon Street full of New Year’s Eve revelers around 3 am local time.

“We have 16 people who are dead, their families are grieving, we have at least 10 more that are clinging to life in the hospital,” Murrill added. “And I think there’s a certain degree of respect that we owe to the dead and their families and the victims.”

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

The incident lead to shelters-in-place at both Georgia and Notre Dame team hotels ahead of their schedule appearance in the Sugar Bowl. Security officials did a sweep of the Caesars Superdome and the area around Bourbon Street, but found no additional issues and ultimately decided to reschedule the game for Thursday afternoon.

ESPN sideline reporter Laura Rutledge, who has been in New Orleans for the bowl and since been covering it following the terror act, shed additional light on what went into the decision to move the kickoff time.

“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 ESPN’s 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 CFP national semifinal to follow just a week away, the Bulldogs and Fighting Irish wanted kickoff to be earlier than the original 8:45 pm ET kickoff time. 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 pm Eastern/3 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 continued.

“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,” Rutledge added. “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.”

Sam Gillenwater and Nick Schultz contributed to this report.