NEW ORLEANS — Silence.
That’s what strikes you while standing next to Caesars Superdome on a glorious Wednesday afternoon. Silence reaches up and shakes you, suffocates you, reminds you not so subtly that sometimes there are more important matters in this world than four quarters and 60 minutes and a College Football Playoff quarterfinal game.
They were supposed to play one, a big one, New Year’s Day night at the Superdome between Notre Dame and Georgia.
Three-plus hours before what would’ve been kickoff, Poydras Street should have been, would have been, a cacophony of crazy. In a good way; in the best of ways. Cars crawling through pregame traffic. Whistles of officers directing vehicles into the proper Superdome garages. Georgia fans decked in red and black and of course, Mardi Gras beads, walking to the Dome. Notre Dame fans sporting blue and gold and, of course, Mardi Gras beads walking to the Dome.
Everyone, for then, friendly and happy and optimistic that their team would win a football game and see their season extended for another week.
Instead of any of that, instead of all of that, there was only silence. So few cars. Too few people. No traffic snaking down Poydras to the massive structure that stands for what this city has long been. Resilient. Tough. Strong.
This city has bounced back before. This city will bounce back again. Not yet. Not Wednesday. Everything was still too raw, too painful, too real to play a game at the Superdome. That’s why it sat silent. It had to sit silent.
Early that morning a terrorist attack killed at least 14 and wounded dozens nearly a mile away on Bourbon Street. That forced the Sugar Bowl, what has become the city’s annual showcase sporting event, to be postponed to 4 p.m. ET on Thursday.
At the corner of Poydras and LaSalle Streets, where there should’ve been bumper to bumper street traffic and shoulder to shoulder pedestrian traffic, there were only the flashing blue lights of a parked police car. In the last 12 hours, it had become a common and somewhat unsettling sight in these streets. Nearby was a Jefferson Parrish Sheriff’s Office mobile command center. Above Garage 6, was a drone taking aerial recon of the area.
It all seemed surreal.
The show of shear law enforcement force was everywhere. On the ground. In the sky. Along the curbs of the surface streets that surround the dome. City police cars here. A fleet of state police SUVs over there. Unmarked SUVs.
A New Orleans Tour Bus rolled slowly by the Dome, empty except for the driver. The ride share pickup/drop-off area by the Dome was vacant. Nobody needing a ride; nobody getting a ride. No reason to be around the Dome. Not on this day, which should be the day of all days for sports fans in this city.
You stand near the Superdome — as close as authorities will let you stand — for five, 10, 15 minutes and don’t see another soul. A car here, a car there. Then, there at the intersection of Poydras and LaSalle, Mike Grace, a 1985 Notre Dame graduate from Macomb, Michigan, and his four sons, all wearing Notre Dame gear, appear.
They had planned to walk to the game around that time, anyway, so they wandered over from their hotel on Saint Joseph Street just to get out and get a look at the Dome. They looked like pre-teens seeing a roller coaster for the first time.
“It sure is big.”
All are long-time Notre Dame fans who have seen their share of Irish home games. Like the Louisville game in September. Wednesday was supposed to be their first bowl game.
That the men were even in New Orleans was by coincidence. They attended a family wedding in Cleveland the day after the CFP first-round playoff win over Indiana, so the home game in South Bend was out. Grace found tickets, found a flight and found a hotel so it was New Orleans for New Year’s. Love, Santa.
“I surprised these guys for Christmas,” he said.
Three of Grace’s four sons drove down from the family home in Michigan. They picked up their brother, who lives in Canton, Ohio, and continued to New Orleans. Grace flew in from Michigan. All five arrived late Tuesday — too late that no one wanted to go out for New Year’s. Not even in New Orleans. Not even to Bourbon Street.
“We were talking about going out,” Grace said. “They were just too tired. By the grace of God … It’s surreal.”
Surreal because Grace’s youngest son, Sam, was a sophomore at Michigan State when a shooter opened fire “two buildings” away on Feb. 13, 2023, and took the lives of three students.
“I,” Sam said, “was stuck in the library for like, seven hours.”
The Graces didn’t learn what happened on Bourbon Street until about 6:15 a.m. Wednesday when the boys’ mother — Grace’s wife — frantically contacted them.
“We were shocked,” Grace said. “It was like, ‘Wow. This is crazy.”
After seeing the Dome, the five hoped to find a place to decompress and eat and maybe have a cold beverage or two and watch the Rose Bowl. They still planned to stay for Thursday’s game but travel plans will have to be altered. Instead of flying home, Grace will hop in the car with his sons for the ultimate father-sons 15-hour road trip back to the Midwest.
“We’ll do a marathon drive back,” he said.
Before then, the Sugar Bowl. Maybe Thursday afternoon will look and feel and be different around the Superdome. Maybe the juice of a Sugar Bowl, of a CFP quarterfinal, of college football, will return. Maybe those who didn’t have flights to catch or hotel rooms to vacate would figure out how to stick around another night so they could do something that nobody wanted to do Wednesday.
Have fun.
On this afternoon, there was none. Only silence.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com