An impossible choice: The Sugar Bowl situation
Breaking down the PR implications of the Sugar Bowl postponement.
Author’s Note: This piece was originally scheduled to be released last Monday, January 6. Due to technical issues that took SID Sports offline, it was not able to be released then. Still, I think it’s an interesting article so I’m still pushing it out, just a lot later than I wanted.
As a Sports Information Director, your role isn’t just to know your program better than anyone else in the nation. It’s also to serve as your team’s public relations director. In college athletics, there often isn’t any big crisis communication needs. This is not one of those times.
Before we get into this, you may be asking “what does he know about this topic?” While I’m not the most seasoned or experienced public relations professional, I have played in the field so to speak. I ran communications for a nonprofit business-oriented organization for a year in addition to my three years working in college athletics as an SID. So, while crisis communications may not be my forte, media relations and public relations are.
The New Year was rang in the worst possible way with a horrendous terrorist attack in New Orleans’ French Quarter in the early hours of New Years’ Day. The attack, apparently carried out by someone sympathetic to the Islamic State, per the FBI’s release on the matter, has killed 15 people as of this writing, per CNN.
Just one mile away from the site of the attack, a football game was scheduled to be played between the Georgia Bulldogs and Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Allstate Sugar Bowl at New Orleans’ Caesar’s Superdome. That game was suspended for 24 hours in a decision that was not made lightly.
I saw a lot of opinions thrown around on social media about the postponement, both in support and against. It was the right decision, as I posted on my Bluesky when the story was breaking.
But how is a decision like this made? That, I may be able to shed some light on.
Crisis Planning
For any major event, be it a Super Bowl, Sugar Bowl, NCAA Tournament game, or just a random ho-hum Saturday afternoon game, there is a team of individuals that plan for things like this. They’re called “risk managers” and any organization or university worth their weight has someone on staff in that role. Risk managers, in essence, are responsible for imagining all that can go wrong so the staff can be prepared. Let’s say a fire breaks out in Section 101 - a risk manager would have already planned evacuation routes and trained the staff on their roles and duties on assisting the evacuation. See how important they are?
Believe it or not, terrorism is often included in risk management, especially for large-scale events like the Sugar Bowl. In fact, modern risk management in sporting events was born out of a terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics, dubbed the “Munich Massacre,” where members of the Palestinian militant group Black September broke into the Olympic Village and held members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, killing eleven of the team members amidst a shootout with police at the Munich airport.
With that historical background, you can assume that someone was involved in the planning for an event like this for not only the Sugar Bowl, but all of the College Football Playoff games.
But crisis planning and risk management often happen in a vacuum where one organization or one staff knows their protocols, but it wasn’t discussed with outside personnel. Say we take the fire example from earlier - would the stadium’s staff communicate that to the players? Or will team staff have a different evacuation procedure than everyone else?
When we get into circumstances and events outside of a closed venue, that’s where the waters get muddied. Law enforcement and other first responders have vastly different protocols in a crisis situation than stadium staff and athletic staffs. So who wins out? That would likely be left to be decided in a meeting between all the affected organizations.
Meeting of Minds
When a major, city-altering event like the attack on Bourbon Street occurs, one of the first things done is setting up a base of operations where investigators and first responders can start sifting through the wreckage, focusing on helping survivors and figuring out what happened.
Almost immediately on New Year’s Day, the possibility of more attacks was strong. According to local news network NBC-WDSU, the FBI was sweeping the French Quarter for additional explosive devices, which included the Superdome. There were no other explosives reportedly found, but the threat of another attack was looming.
The Sugar Bowl was quick to post that they were meeting with officials on the local, state and federal levels regarding the game.
Travel for a game like a College Football Playoff Quarterfinal at a prestigious game like the Sugar Bowl is massive. The Superdome seats 83,000 people - how many of those were out-of-town fans? What about the teams? Were they safe in New Orleans?
Pretty much everyone in the city was under a shelter-in-place order as the FBI combed through the city looking for more explosives. With the FBI still unwilling to share if the attacker was working alone or had any accomplices, the shelter-in-place orders were necessary for the safety of everyone staying at the hotels, not just the teams.
The Sugar Bowl originally had a scheduled kickoff time of 7:45 p.m. Central - the local time of Louisiana. Reports about the teams’ shelter-in-place orders were still trickling in as late as 12:45 p.m., according to
. That may not seem like a big deal, with seven or so hours before kickoff. But logistically, it certainly is.Even on a normal Saturday, teams generally arrive to the stadium around four hours ahead of kickoff. That would translate to a roughly 3:15 p.m. arrival time at the very latest. For a big bowl like this, you could imagine teams wanting to arrive earlier and get acclimated to the new venue.
Past that, the staff charged with getting everything ready for the game, including receiving the teams and getting them settled and taken care of in the locker rooms, were unable to get to the Superdome based on the lockdowns around the French Quarter.
These were all things the Sugar Bowl, College Football Playoff and governmental officials had to consider in addition to the idea of playing a game after such a tragedy as New Orleans saw.
Situations like this are fluid, especially when we’re talking about a mass-casualty event and so many people traveling to the city for New Year’s Eve, the Sugar Bowl, or any other event. By the time a 1 p.m. local time press conference was called, the game had its back against the wall. If the game was going to be played, lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders would have to be lifted so players and staff could get to the Superdome. I’ve seen some posit the idea that you could lift the restrictions for only essential personnel, but that would include diverting law enforcement attention from the investigation and the victims of the attack towards moving people into the Superdome for a football game. In other words: a public relations nightmare.
It was an impossible decision. One that had no right or wrong answer. But with the hand they were dealt, a postponement was the only real course of action.
Race Against the Clock
As the Peach Bowl cascaded into Cam Skattebo-led madness towards a circus finish, the Sugar Bowl announced that it would be postponed 24 hours with no official mention of a kickoff time. Most fans - myself included - assumed that the game would kick off at the scheduled 7:45 p.m. local time, just one day later. Behind the scenes, though, conversations were quickly progressing to move that up.
You see, in a bracketed playoff format like the College Football Playoff, each round of the tournament has specific times, dates and places all predetermined so that the host venues can prepare for the event and fully staff it. For the Sugar Bowl winner, a spot in the Capital One Orange Bowl was up next. With that was a date, though. One that couldn’t be moved: Thursday, January 9, 2025. 7:30 p.m. Eastern.
The Orange Bowl is the first of the two Semifinal games - the Cotton Bowl Classic will be the next day, Friday, January 10 at 7:30 p.m. - and the College Football Playoff said that, despite the postponement in New Orleans, the game must go on.
As much as it may make sense to flip the game times and move the Orange Bowl to account for the shorter rest, it’s likely impossible. This was a logistics-led decision. Think about it - with the game only nine days away, could you realistically alter the schedules of all the volunteers, stadium staff, and teams all while still being able to put on the game? It’s certainly possible, but it would be incredibly difficult.
But, with the Sugar Bowl delayed, College Football Playoff brass also had to consider that the winner of the Sugar Bowl - ultimately, Notre Dame - would be playing their Semifinal on shorter rest than their opponent. It’s just one day, but that could still be seen as a competitive advantage for the opposition (more on competitive advantages of off weeks later this week).
So, in order to maximize the rest for the Sugar Bowl winner, you had to move the game up. Moving to a 3:00 p.m. local time kickoff accomplishes that. It makes it so fans still in New Orleans can attend the game, gives law enforcement a fighting chance to clear the area and make headway on the early parts of their investigation, and gives more rest to the game’s winner.
Yes, it’s not ideal for the game to kickoff in the middle of a workday. We all understand that. But this is one of the few times that television ratings didn’t win out in modern college athletics. There was more at play here - player, fan and staff safety, alongside competitive balance, namely.
The PR Side
All in all, the Sugar Bowl, CFP and everyone else involved handled the situation just as well as you’d expect. Sure, the decision took a while to come to, but that’s normal in crisis scenarios like this. There’s a lot of moving parts in a crisis situation and a lot of people with varying goals at the table. You think the Sugar Bowl was the priority here? Not a chance - first responders and the investigations took that mantle.
I’d give props to the Sugar Bowl public relations teams for their statements, though. As things were decided upon, they made clear and concise statements through official social media channels to update everyone. Could they have put out more? Sure, but what would that accomplish?
Yes, the breaking news aspect of the delay wasn’t handled the best (props to
for standing in the batter’s box on Bluesky and taking heat with good sources backing up their news), with news sites not updating their webpages to account for what on-air talent was saying, but that’s not on the CFP or Sugar Bowl. That’s on the news outlets.This was, as I’ve said before, an impossible decision. They had to weigh human tragedy against human interest in a football game. They became responsible for everyone’s safety in the face of a terrorist threat. In the face of that, the CFP and the Sugar Bowl made the right choice - and communicated it well.
What I’m Reading:
Three-Point Stance by Tyler Schuster: Three-Point Stance is your favorite independent college football newsletter. Come for in-depth analysis and bold commentary, stay for the jokes and memes. An idea hatched after years of 12-hour days glued to the couch, Tyler Schuster puts his passion for the sport on full display, delivering big-picture ideas, weekly previews and gambling nuggets directly to your inbox.
An idea hatched after years of 12-hour days glued to the couch, Tyler Schuster puts his passion for the sport on full display, delivering big-picture ideas, weekly previews and gambling nuggets directly to your inbox.
Tailgators Setup by Brian Lennon, John Crimella, and Gary McDaniel: I’ll be a little selfish on this one and plug a great college football podcast that I was lucky enough to join a few weeks back to talk UEC and SID Sports! Brian, John and Gary are a ton of fun to listen to and break down the weekend to come in a very easy to digest and entertaining way. Be sure to tune into the Tailgators' Setup podcast and subscribe for more great content from them!
Split Zone Duo by Alex Kirshner, Steven Godfrey, and Richard Johnson: You can't beat Alex, Richard and Godfrey. They're on the front lines breaking news and creating the best content in the game. I 100 percent recommend SZD for anyone into college football and Steven Godfrey hating your team. They’re mostly a podcast publication, but sometimes being able to listen to three well-informed guys talking about college football is what you need in your life.
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I can’t believe all that goes into a crisis situation. It is very sad that colleges have to have specific positions for these tragedies. I hope they are not used very often in the future. Thank you for shedding light on the topic and explaining all that goes into a decision like moving a scheduled playoff game when tragedy strikes.