Calls from mom: How New Orleans terrorist tragedy reminds us the Sugar Bowl is just a game

NEW ORLEANS — How do you create normalcy amidst a situation so incredibly abnormal? You don’t. So you postpone the Sugar Bowl. It’s really that simple.

The city of New Orleans didn’t fall victim to tone deafness on New Year’s Day. Decision makers pushed back Notre Dame’s matchup with Georgia in the wake of a terribly troubling terrorist attack that killed at least 15 people on Bourbon Street and wounded dozens more, and it was absolutely the correct call.

The only victims were those who lost their lives and the families who survived them and have to face every day knowing their loved ones are gone forever.

I struggled with the idea of writing a column of this nature because this isn’t about me. It isn’t about anyone who set foot on the scene of the Big Easy’s biggest party attraction Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning and is fortunate enough to write about it in the wee hours of Thursday. We’re such a small sliver of the story.

It’s about those who won’t ever hear the sound of their mother’s voice over the phone again.

My mom’s string of calls commenced at 6:53 a.m. CT Wednesday. I left Bourbon sometime between 1 and 1:30. I didn’t fall asleep until sometime after 2. Needless to say, with a scheduled Sugar Bowl kickoff time of 7:45 p.m. local, I planned on sleeping in. Not a chance. I woke up between 8 and 8:30 — late, considering the circumstances, but early had nothing so tragic transpired — and called her back at 8:23. By that time, I had heard what happened. I just hadn’t comprehended it yet.

Who had? Who has?

The same street thousands of Notre Dame fans, Georgia fans, tourists, locals, Sugar Bowl aficionados — whoever — strode down all day Tuesday was a crime scene come Wednesday. Police tape and Orleans Parish Coroner vehicles replaced footprints of folks just happy to be alive, just happy to be in one of America’s most famous cities on the eve a celebration of one of America’s most famous pastimes — college football.

College football didn’t matter on the first day of 2025. And, frankly, it doesn’t really matter on the second day of it either.

The Fighting Irish and Bulldogs are in New Orleans on a business trip, sure, but tens of thousands of people followed them there to be a part of it, or at least get as close as possible to it as they could, and some of the peers they shared a sense of belonging and optimism with won’t ever have those feelings again. Won’t have any feelings of any kind again.

That’s as sad of a reality as any.

You can’t play a game in the immediate aftermath of that. Sports, as much as so many of us want to paint them out to be, aren’t life and death. Though it shouldn’t have been, Bourbon Street was exactly that this week.

Should the game be played at some point? Absolutely. The city and representatives from the bowl believe it can go on as soon as this afternoon. Fair enough. The teams are understandably shaken up by what happened mere blocks down the road from their respective hotels. Everyone with a heart is, from Broadway in New York to Broadway in Nashville. Places in between and far beyond.

But the teams are also ready to do what they’ve trained themselves to do for years and years, what Texas, Arizona State, Ohio State and Oregon did Wednesday — suit up, kick off and compete for a spot in the CFP semifinals. Notre Dame and Georgia have earned the right to let the best team win.

This week, however, we’re all losers. The American society suffered another senseless defeat with a premeditated act of violence and terror that took innocent souls away from earth far too soon — a far too frequent failure of who we should be as human beings.

Notre Dame and Georgia have to play in a stadium right down the road from where it happened, where Irish tight end Mitchell Evans harmlessly moseyed around with his family 12 hours or so prior to the proceedings, caught by the unexpected gaze of Blue & Gold’s boots on the ground.

Yes, proceedings, defined as “events or a series of activities involving a formal or set procedure” by the Oxford Dictionary. That’s what mass casualty occasions in the United States have become — set in stone, like clockwork, all too common.

Maybe Evans makes a big play for Notre Dame today. Maybe he doesn’t. Doesn’t matter. He’s still here with us, and that’s more than many can say. If his mom calls him Wednesday morning to wish him luck, he can answer. Also more than many can say.

Sad, but true. Shouldn’t be.