State should focus on bringing title game back

By Ed Daniels, Clarion Herald Sports

On a Sunday night in New Orleans in January, Bourbon Street looked like the Sunday night before Mardi Gras.

The LSU band played, as thousands of Tiger fans were singing and dancing. There was lots of purple and gold interspersed with some Clemson orange.

LSU was back in the championship game of college football, and so was New Orleans, after an eight-year hiatus.

Let’s hope LSU is back real soon.

Chances are the Tigers will be back before New Orleans.

The sites for the next four college football title games have been decided. It is Miami in 2021, followed by Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Houston.

The 2025 and 2026 sites have yet to be determined, but New Orleans likely will not get either one of those slots. And, if the Superdome is to host another championship game soon, the state of Louisiana must do more.

To bring the title game to New Orleans, Allstate Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley said his organization made an $8 million donation and fronted another $4 million of the cost of hosting.

The $4 million will come back to the Sugar Bowl via a rebate in what Hundley calls a complicated system. But, the $8 million was a gift.

At the end of the 2014 season, Dallas got the first College Football Playoff championship game. The state of Texas made a $14 million contribution to the cause.

Many will squawk about state tax dollars being used to attract sporting events. But, not the many hotels, restaurants and merchants who benefited from having Clemson and LSU in our city.

The estimated economic impact of the game is $250 to $300 million. Let’s see, spend $12 million. Get back $250 million. Sounds like a good deal to me.

In the late ’60s, the same debate – about state money subsidizing a football stadium – was made about the Superdome. The Dome was supposed to cost $80 million to build.

Opponents cried foul when the final cost more than doubled. Back then, a group of reformers called the “Young Turks” opposed Gov. John McKeithen on his plan for the funding of the Superdome. McKeithen believed the stadium to be a huge boost to tourism in the city of New Orleans.

His beliefs turned into reality.

The success of the Superdome in attracting major events made New Orleans the best big-event town in the country.

No one does it like we do. Not Miami, certainly not L.A. Nowhere.

This spring, the women’s Final Four returns. In 2022, the men’s Final Four returns, and two years later, so does the Super Bowl.

But, a College Football Playoff championship game returning is a big maybe.

Louisiana, it is your call.

Ed Daniels is sports director of ABC26 WGNO. He can be reached at edaniels@clarionherald.org.