The big game in Big Easy: A History of the Super Bowl in New Orleans

There is always, says the locals, something happens in New Orleans. This weekend is the Super Bowl. For the 11th time, Big Easy will host the big game and add another chapter in a long legacy of on-Field drama and off-field disability.

New Orleans was hosting his first Super Bowl on January 11, 1970: Super Bowl IV with Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings. The Super Bowl was a new invention at the time, a true crossover event between the dueling American football league and national football leagues. The two leagues – which would merge into what is now the modern NFL the following season – had a few criteria for the game: It had to be played somewhere warm and it had to accommodate a lot of fans. For the 1970 championship, Miamis Orange Bowl, hosted the previous two years, was a strong competitor, but it was just hosting the back-to-back championships and there was room for a newcomer to slip in. New Orleans Mayor Victor H. Schiro won the leagues with a delegation that included Times-Picayune Editor George Healy and the legendary Dixieland Jazz Trumpets Al Hirt, who suggested the city’s Tulane Stadium (sometimes known as “Sugar Bowl”) as an alternative. At that time, Tulane Stadium was one of the largest in the country that was able to sit over 80,000 fans, and the city around it was well prepared to host huge events, with the notorious Mardi Gras who already pulled in tourists in from all over the world. Especially the 1970s were one Wild Time for New OrleansAs the traditional party began to merge with the free love party era, which contributed to massive, violent crowds filling Bourbon Street.

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These days, local historian Edward Brantley tells Rolling stonesSuper Bowl hits New Orleans “Like a Tornado” that fills the pockets of everyone from taxi drivers to sound/ visual technologies as a horde of players, fans, press and promoters rise down to town. The last seven matches host the city’s Superdome, which ended the construction in 1975 and brought the heart of Big Easy’s sports culture right into the central center of the business district. Brantley says the city’s remarkable density of hotels makes the city easy to sell to NFL and associated TV networks. Eg opponents. Instead, Hyatt Ground Zero for The Media Frenzy: Broadcast Networks is creating a store on a top floor with picture windows overlooking the dome, and printing journalists will book lower floors.

No matter who is in the city, however, Brantley says the big one will easily find a way to do it on himself. In 2019, for example, the New Orleans Saints lost for LA RAMS in the NFC Championship game, partly thanks to a very controversial effortless passport interference call that went against them late in the game. Tina Howell, a local sports reporter and editor -in -chief of Saints Fan Blog Canal Street Chronicles, says the city got up and declared the Super Bowl on Sunday to be “Boycott Bowl.” Instead of showing the big game, bars and restaurants around the city set a repeat of the Super Bowl XLIV, where the saints blew out of Indianapolis Colts 31 to 17. An improvised parade sprang up, with reveals dressed as blind judge and voodoo -Duks with the NFL logo on them. A concert with local actions such as Big Freedia and Choppa raised $ 57,000 to a local charity. Brantley remembers that bars that postpone “don’t serve” prints with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s face on them. “We were there to celebrate our team and what we had achieved that year,” Howell said. “It wasn’t a sad party.” However, it may have been just a little small – partly thanks to the protest, the Super Bowl itself, with Rams, was one of Lowest rated in the NFL story.

In other years, however, Nola has been hosting some absolute stable burnersIncluding Brett Favre’s dominant victory for Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl XXXI (he threw in 246 yards, two touchdowns and ran in another score for good goal); Pittsburgh Steelers’ Blitzkrieg 66-Yard drive, led by Quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who secured the victory in the team’s first performance in the Super Bowl IX in 1975; And 49ers legend Joe Montana’s dominance of Denver Broncos in 1990’s Super Bowl XXIV. In recent years there have been even more hijinks: 2013 “Harbaughbowl” between brothers John and Jim Harbaugh coaching of Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers respectively, a controversial power outage early in the third quarter. Conspiracy theorists say the extended break in the action game was stopped in 34 minutes-Bidrog to Niner’s almost-game-winning rally from a 28-6 deficit. The ravens won, but fans are still in the dark about what happened. However, the locals are in no doubt: Entergy, the local power supply, turned up something. “Do you know Captain Picard FacePalm Meme?” Brantley says and laughs. “If you are talking about the power cut, any local will just give you it and mumble ‘Entergy.'”

The geography of the city also contributes to the exuberant character of the celebration. The modern Super Bowl goes down within walking distance of New Orleans’ famous French neighborhood, and the bars and restaurants will be packed. In the wild days of the late 1980s and 1990s, says Brantley, Barer along Bourbon Street would pay strippers to show their goods on the long gallery balconies that fores the road, and host ceremonial light rod frase to stop with climbing them.

This year the city has to employ or loser. But Brantley says his city is more than prepared for it. Many of the city’s historic light bars and columns in the French Quarter are already equipped with “Romeo catchers” or rings of curved spikes that discourage lovers (or in this case bird fans) from climbing them.

“People always say they come here and they take a piece of town with them when they travel,” says Howell. With Philly fans in the city, it can just be literal: the big light may have to count their Romeo prisoners when large quantities of game go home.

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