How Georgia and Notre Dame handled tragedy, uncertainty and then a football game over 36 hours in New Orleans
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
NEW ORLEANS — Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua woke up Wednesday at 5:30 a.m. and checked his phone. Several news alerts popped up. The words “domestic terror attack” flashed across his screen. He clicked the first link wondering where the incident happened.
“It turned out,” Bevacqua said after Notre Dame’s 23-10 win over Georgia on Thursday in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, “that it happened just a few blocks from us.”
Wednesday, Jan. 1 was supposed to be game day for the coaches and players at Georgia and Notre Dame. Instead, most had a similar sense of dread and confusion as Bevacqua when they awoke to phone messages from family and friends, all asking about the attack in New Orleans, where a man drove his pickup truck down Bourbon Street a little after 3 a.m., killing 14 people and injuring dozens more before being shot and killed by police.
In the 36 hours that followed, officials, coaches and administrators from the schools and bowl game worked around the clock — first to confirm the physical safety of hundreds of players, staff, family and friends, and then to simultaneously make sure everyone could process the tragedy while also finding a way to play a college football game that would be the biggest of the season for both teams.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey received a call from Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley a little after 6 a.m. on Wednesday. Hundley explained that an incident had occurred on Bourbon Street, just three blocks from Georgia’s team hotel. Details were sketchy, but there was already talk that the game’s scheduled kickoff on Wednesday night could be in jeopardy.
Sankey has been through similar uncertainty before, he said — the COVID-19 season, a bomb threat before a bowl game — and his first instinct was to let the dust settle, to avoid the rumors and speculation in favor of hard facts. So, he decided to go for a run. He left his hotel, turned down Canal Street in the heart of the French Quarter, and quickly understood just how grim the situation was.
“You see the coroner’s wagon,” Sankey said, “and I realized pretty quickly the scope of the scene.”
Earlier in the week, Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard had gone around the locker room asking each of his teammates if they had spare tickets for the game. Leonard is from Fairhope, Alabama, less than a three-hour drive from New Orleans, and this was the closest he’d ever had to a home game in his college career. He had close to 100 family and friends, including the mayor of Fairhope, planning to make the trip.
By Wednesday morning, he was just hoping few had yet to get into their cars for the drive.
Leonard’s father, Chad, awakened to the sounds of emergency vehicles just after 3 a.m. but assumed it was the typical background noise in a city like New Orleans, where the revelry doesn’t end until the sun is up, and the sirens are part of the soundtrack of the party. His wife, Heather, also noticed all the text messages popping up on her phone but assumed it was friends saying, “Happy New Year” and didn’t check until morning.
“It was just a sad, bizarre day trying to communicate with everybody,” Heather Leonard said.
Chad Leonard did a quick roll call, scrolling through his phone to reach out to everyone he knew who was planning to be at the game. Everyone was safe.
Meanwhile, Chad and Heather were being pinged by the staff at Notre Dame. After accounting for players and support staff, head coach Marcus Freeman turned his attention to the cadre of family members he knew were in town to support their sons.
“They wanted every parent to check in and make sure their group was OK,” Heather Leonard said. “They told us the players were all OK, and they just wanted to make sure we were good.”
Georgia and Notre Dame players were effectively under lockdown at their team hotels through the early part of the day, still unsure if there was a game to be played.
Figuring out that part fell to a small group of law enforcement, government officials, conference and team personnel and Hundley, the Sugar Bowl CEO.
“It was a whirlwind,” Hundley said. “I was questioning what it meant, were we going to be able to play?”
Hundley was a centerpiece in a phone tree that extended from Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry to the city’s police chief, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, leadership at the FBI and state police department, Sankey and the teams’ athletics directors, along with the staff at the Caesars Superdome, which was scheduled to host the Sugar Bowl on Wednesday and then immediately make room for another event happening Thursday.
By midmorning, Hundley said, it was clear the game couldn’t be played as scheduled. The bulk of the city’s law enforcement was focused on investigating the attack. And as of a Wednesday afternoon news conference, investigators still believed the attack could involve more than just the driver of the pickup truck. So, safety concerns for the city remained, and there would be insufficient security for the game.
Landry quickly got to work connecting city and Sugar Bowl officials with law enforcement around the region. Hundley said he was convinced the game could safely be played the following day. Unlike in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the Sugar Bowl was moved to Atlanta, there was never any serious discussion of changing venues.
“There was confidence from law enforcement they’d have the necessary assets in place,” Hundley said. “And this is a big-event city. When it comes to logistics, we can do almost anything. We knew it would be a matter of just working through details.”
Still, those details were massive. Sugar Bowl officials had to work to ensure there were enough hotel rooms for the teams for an extra night, work with law enforcement to beef up security, adjust the Superdome’s event schedule, and work with ESPN and other media partners to find a broadcast window that worked.
The initial plan was to move the game back 24 hours and kick off in a prime-time TV window Thursday, but both teams were eager to play the game as soon as it was safe to do so. Sankey had been on a text chain with Georgia president Jere Morehead, AD Josh Brooks and head coach Kirby Smart throughout the day. Bevacqua said he traded more than 20 texts with College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark, hoping to find a path to get the game played as quickly as possible. Ultimately, city and state leaders were able to gather support from the FBI, ATF and other Louisiana and out-of-state police departments to cover security needs for the game.
“The winning team would’ve already lost a day in that,” Sankey said. “So, there were some questions that produced more phone calls and text messages. About 3 or 4 p.m. we understood that there’d be enough time for security preparations [for a 3 p.m. CT kickoff].”
In the team hotels, coaches were working to find a course of action that allowed the teams to process the tragedy of the day while still focusing on a game that needed to be played.
Smart set up a FaceTime call with coaches and team leadership and came up with a plan. “We brought the players down and met with them and said, ‘This is the plan moving forward,'” Smart said. “They said, ‘Let’s go. Put the ball down and get ready to go play.'”
Freeman’s initial thought was to keep the team as dialed in to football as possible but changed his mind.
“Once you found out more details about the tragedy, the emotions took over each individual differently,” he said.
Notre Dame team chaplain Rev. Nathan D. Wills held a team prayer service that afternoon.
“It’s OK to mourn for what happened in this city and what happened to these victims,” Bevacqua said of the prayer service message. “But you can also enjoy what you have tomorrow and this opportunity. That’s the human condition, right? Dealing with the worst of the worst and this unbelievable moment in the lives of these young student athletes, almost simultaneously. I think that was tough on them, but it’s to the credit of Coach Freeman and his staff, I think the team handled it so well.”
Freeman held a normal walk-through and a team meeting, but then he gave the team three hours Wednesday night to visit with family.
“Being a parent myself, in times of tragedy, you want to be around your children,” Freeman said. “I think that helped the parents as much as it helped the players to be around each other, and to help them reset and get their mind into a place that it needed to be.”
It was a necessary escape, defensive end R.J. Oben said.
“It was good to take time off to spend with our families and clear our minds,” he said. “We woke up with the intention to play a game. We didn’t really know we weren’t going to be playing until about 3 in the afternoon. Once we talked about it, Coach gave us a schedule, guys stayed together and stayed locked in.”
A number of players stayed in — some watching movies on Netflix, some getting extra rest, and a number investing in more film study of Georgia, including Leonard.
After team meetings, Leonard texted quarterbacks coach Gino Guidugli and asked to get in some extra work. They spent more than four hours sifting through tape of Georgia.
“Every single person in our locker room is praying for those families that are out there,” Leonard said. “But as a Notre Dame player, you recruit the right people for a reason. And I think adding another day is just helping our superpower out. We say our superpowers all the time: our preparation and the character in our locker room. Those are two intangible things that we have that we utilize.”
If Leonard thought the extra time benefited the Irish, Smart was quick to dismiss any notion that the tragic events had any impact on how his team performed when it finally took the field.
“That was a very traumatic event,” Smart said. “But this team was focused and ready to go play. So, I’m not going to sit here and talk about the tragedy affecting our team. Notre Dame played well. We didn’t play great. But when we turned the ball over twice and have a kickoff returned, that’s what I attribute the loss to. Not to the tragedy or what happened. And that’s not any disrespect to the community of New Orleans or the people with tragic losses.”
By Thursday morning, Bourbon Street had reopened to foot traffic. Revelers — many in Georgia red and black or Notre Dame green and gold — enjoyed lunch and cocktails before making their way to the stadium for a midafternoon kickoff.
But around the Superdome, it was clear things had changed. Most streets surrounding the stadium were closed to vehicle traffic. K-9 units and armed police were omnipresent. SWAT team trucks were parked on nearly every corner, and photographers snapped pictures of the eerie scene.
Inside the stadium though, the reverie continued.
More than 57,000 fans came through the gates — about 80% of what had initially been expected — for a robust turnout that surprised even Hundley.
New Orleans native Samyra sang the national anthem, and the crowd erupted in chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A.” Before the game, Notre Dame players decided they wanted to make a gesture of support. They ran onto the field carrying the American flag.
“It was a hard day for many reasons but the teamwork with [local, state and bowl officials] — everybody came together and said, ‘Let’s try to make the best situation out of a really horrible moment in time for the city and America,” said Bevacqua, who spent Wednesday from 5:30 a.m. to midnight on the phone trying to make the game happen. “And there was such energy in the stadium. That was comforting to see.”
Notre Dame won. That won’t be what most fans remember about this year’s Sugar Bowl. As Hundley stood on the field amid postgame confetti and celebrations, having barely slept in the past 40 hours, he thought that perhaps they won’t remember it entirely for an act of terrorism either. Instead, they might also think of the resilience of a city and the effort of so many people who came together to ensure the game could be played.
“Sports can really be a healing exercise,” Hundley said. “I don’t know if this was or wasn’t, but I sure hope it was.”
Mark Schlabach contributed to this story.
NEW YORK — The Jazz Age is in full swing at Yankee Stadium.
Whether with his bat, his glove, his arm or his smile, Jazz Chisholm Jr. is energizing the New York Yankees and their fans.
Chisholm hit a second-inning, go-ahead homer and a bases-loaded triple while making three sparkling defensive plays at third base Sunday in a 12-5 romp over the Athletics.
“That’s why we got him. That’s what the Yankees do. They go after guys that are going to make an impact,” said New York captain Aaron Judge, who homered twice to reach 30 for the sixth time.
Chisholm is batting .318 with six homers, 18 RBIs and four stolen bases since returning from a strained right oblique on June 3, raising his season totals to .242 with 13 homers, 35 and 10 steals in 53 games.
“I feel like me. I feel I’m back in my era, that I was younger just going out there and just hitting, just not worrying about stuff,” the 27-year-old said. “Just not worrying by my swing, not worrying about striding too far. Everything just feels good and I’m just going.”
After a four-RBI night against Boston in his fourth game back, Chisholm made the unusual assertion he was thriving by giving 70% effort and not stressing.
With New York seeking to reopen a 1½-game AL East lead, he drove a first-pitch sinker from former Yankee Luis Severino into the right-field seats for a 1-0, second-inning lead. Ever exuberant, he raised his right hand and made a peace sign toward the Yankees bullpen after rounding first.
Chisholm snagged Jacob Wilson‘s two-hopper with two on and one out in the third, bounded off third base for the forceout and balletically arced a throw to first for an inning-ending double play.
With the bases loaded in the bottom half, Chisholm hit a changeup to the right-center gap that rolled past center fielder Denzel Clarke. He pulled into third base standing up and raised three fingers.
“It’s like a blackout situation,” Chisholm said. “I didn’t even realize I put up three at third base.”
With the bases loaded in the sixth, he made a diving stop near the dirt behind third on Luis Urías‘ 102.1 mph smash, popped up and followed with a one-hop throw to first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. Then he caught Tyler Soderstrom‘s foul pop in the eighth inning while falling against netting in the narrow space next to the rolled-up tarp.
“Jazz’s defense I think was better than even his day at the plate,” said pitcher Marcus Stroman, who won in his return from a 2½-month injury layoff. “He was incredible over there: a bunch of huge plays that helped me out in big spots, plays that are not normal plays.”
New York acquired Chisholm from Miami last July 27 for three minor leaguers. Since then, he has hit .257 with 24 homers, 58 RBIs and 28 stolen bases in 99 games.
“His game’s so electric, and he can change the game and kind of affect the game in so many different ways in a dynamic fashion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “So, when he is playing at a high level, I think it does energize everyone.”
Chisholm briefly caused worry in the sixth. He grimaced in pain after stopping his swing at a 1-2 fastball from Elvis Alvarado, which sailed high and outside. Chisholm went to the dugout and immediately up the tunnel to the clubhouse.
Then he reappeared at third base for the start of the seventh.
“The bat kind of slipped out of my hand and hit me on the finger,” he said. “It just hit the bone and when you get hit on the bone, it’s kind of funny, it’s just feels weird. So, it was kind of scary at first, but we’re good.”
Judge, meanwhile, didn’t allow Athletics reliever Tyler Ferguson to make good on last year’s wish of striking out the Yankees slugger.
Ferguson, who set his goal last year after making his debut with the Athletics following nine seasons in the minor leagues, was one strike away in his first matchup with Judge on Sunday. Instead, he gave up a two-run shot off a 95.5 mph four-seam fastball in the seventh to become the 261st pitcher to give up a homer to the slugger.
Judge said he had been unaware of Ferguson’s comment.
Ferguson turned around and watched the 426-foot drive as YES Network play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco proclaimed: “The King of Fresno.”
“That’s why you don’t talk in public,” YES Network analyst and former reliever Jeff Nelson said on the telecast. “You don’t make a comment that I want to strike out Judge in public. You keep it to yourself.”
Ferguson graduated from Clovis West High School in Fresno when Judge batted .308 as a sophomore at Fresno State in 2012.
“First time facing him, best hitter in the league,” Ferguson said. “So I was looking forward to that at-bat. I was able to get ahead and then wasn’t able to execute a couple of pitches and he was able to get it back to 3-2 and I didn’t get the ball quite as high as I would have liked and he made a good swing on it.”
Judge reached 30 homers for the fifth straight season and fourth time before All-Star break. He also became the sixth player in team history with six 30-homer seasons, and he joined Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio as just the third to do so in the first 10 years of his career.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
If you picked the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers to be the first team to win 50 games this MLB season, you weren’t alone.
You were also wrong.
If you picked the Detroit Tigers, congratulations! We’re not sure we believe you, but we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
The Tigers won their 50th game on Tuesday, a full day before the Dodgers, and they got there thanks to big contributions all season from ace Tarik Skubal, the red-hot Riley Greene and the resurgent Javier Baez, among many others.
But are they really as good as they’ve played so far? Are they even the American League’s best team? Could they defeat the Dodgers (or whichever team comes out of a stacked National League) in the World Series?
We asked MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Tim Keown, Jeff Passan and David Schoenfield to tackle all things Tigers before they play host to the Minnesota Twins on “Sunday Night Baseball” (7 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN2).
Who is the biggest threat to Detroit in the AL — and would you take the Tigers to beat them in an ALCS showdown?
Doolittle: The Yankees still have the AL’s best roster and remain the favorites in the circuit, even with the Rays and Astros closing in fast on both Detroit and New York. This feels like a season in which, by the time we get to October, there’s not going to be a clear-cut front-runner in the AL. But if we zero in on a possible Tigers-Yankees ALCS, I like the interchangeability of the Detroit staff, which we saw in action late last year. Max Fried and Skubal cancel each other out, so it really comes down to the number of favorable matchups A.J. Hinch can manipulate during a series of games between two postseason offenses likely predicated on timely multi-run homers.
Keown: It’s obviously the Yankees — unless it’s the Rays. Tampa’s lineup is deep and insistent, and the pitching staff is exactly what it always seems to be: consistent, stingy and comprised of guys only hardcore fans can identify. They’re really, really good — by far the best big league team playing in a minor league ballpark.
Passan: It’s still the New York Yankees. They’ve got Aaron Judge, they’ve got Fried and Carlos Rodon for four starts, they’ve got better lineup depth than Detroit. Who wins the theoretical matchup could depend on how aggressively each team pursues improvement at the trade deadline. Suffice to say, the Tigers will not be trading Jack Flaherty this year.
Schoenfield: I was going to say the Yankees as well, but as I’m writing this I just watched the Astros sweep the Phillies, holding them to one run in three games. As great as Skubal has been, Hunter Brown has been just as good — if not better. (A couple of Brown-Skubal matchups in the ALCS would be super fun.) Throw in Framber Valdez and you have two aces plus one of the best late-game bullpens in the biz. The offense? Nothing great. The difference-maker is clear: getting Yordan Alvarez healthy and hitting again.
Who is the biggest threat to Detroit in the NL — and would you take the Tigers to beat them in a World Series matchup?
Doolittle: The Dodgers are the team to beat, full stop. In many ways, their uneven start to the season, caused by so many pitching injuries, represents the lower tier of L.A.’s possible range of outcomes. And the Dodgers still are right there at the top of the majors. I can’t think of any good reason to pick against them in any 2025 competitive context. In a Tigers-Dodgers World Series — which would somehow be the first one ever — I just can’t see the Tigers scoring enough to beat L.A. four times.
Keown: The Dodgers. No need to get cute here. The Dodgers are the biggest threat to just about everything baseball-related. And while the matchup would be a hell of a lot of fun, filled with all those contradictory juxtapositions that makes a series riveting, let’s just say L.A. in seven.
Passan: It’s still the Los Angeles Dodgers. They’re getting healthier, with Shohei Ohtani back on the mound and still hitting more home runs than anyone in the National League. Will Smith is having the quietest .300/.400/.500 season in memory. Freddie Freeman is doing Freddie Freeman things. Andy Pages is playing All-Star-caliber baseball. Even Max Muncy is hitting now. And, yes, the pitching has been a problem, but they’ve got enough depth — and enough minor league depth to use in trades — that they’re bound to find 13 more-than-viable arms to use in October.
Schoenfield: A Tigers-Dodgers showdown would be a classic Original 16 matchup and those always feel a little more special. Although who wouldn’t want to see a rematch of the 1945, 1935, 1908 or 1907 World Series between the Tigers and Cubs? Those were split 2-2, so we need a tiebreaker. But I digress. Yes, the Dodgers are still the team to beat in the NL — especially since we’ve seen the Phillies’ issues on offense, the Cubs’ lack of pitching depth and the Mets’ inconsistency. The Dodgers have injuries to deal with, but there is still time for Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and everyone else to get back.
One game, season on the line, who would you want on the mound for your team: Tarik Skubal or any other ace in the sport?
Doolittle: I’d go with Skubal by a hair over Zack Wheeler, with Paul Skenes lurking in the three-hole. The way things are going, by the end of the year it might be Jacob Misiorowski, but I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Anyway, Skubal has carried last season’s consistent dominance over and he’s just in that rare zone that great starters reach where you’re surprised when someone actually scores against them. He and Wheeler are tied with the most game scores of 70 or better (18) since the start of last season. Their teams are both 17-1 in those games. It’s a coin flip, but give me Skubal.
Keown: Skubal. There are plenty of other candidates — Wheeler, Fried, Jacob deGrom, and how about some love for Logan Webb? — but I’m all but certain a poll of big league hitters would reveal Skubal as the one they’d least like to face with everything riding on the outcome.
Passan: Give me Skubal. Even if others have the experience and pedigree, I’m going to bet on stuff. And nobody’s stuff — not even Skenes’ — is at Skubal’s level right now. He doesn’t walk anyone. He strikes out everyone. He suppresses home runs. If you could build a pitcher in a lab, he would look a lot like Skubal.
Schoenfield: I’m going with Wheeler, just based on his postseason track record: He has a 2.18 ERA over 70⅓ career innings in October, allowing no runs or one run in five of his 11 career starts. Those are all since 2022, so it’s not like we’re looking at accomplishments from a decade ago. And Wheeler is arguably pitching better than ever, with a career-low OPS allowed and a career-high strikeout rate.
What is Detroit’s biggest weakness that could be exposed in October?
Doolittle: I think elite October-level pitching might expose an overachieving offense. It’s a solid lineup but the team’s leading run producers — Greene, Spencer Torkelson, Zach McKinstry, Baez, etc. — can pile up the whiffs in a hurry. If that happens, this is a team that doesn’t run at all, and that lack of versatility concerns me.
Keown: The Tigers are the odd team that doesn’t have a glaring weakness or an especially glaring strength. They have a lot of really good players but just one great one in Skubal. (We’re keeping a second spot warm for Riley Greene.) They’re managed by someone who knows how to navigate the postseason, and they’ve rolled the confidence they gained with last season’s remarkable playoff run into this season. So take your pick: Any aspect of the game could propel them to a title, and any aspect could be their demise. And no, that doesn’t answer the question.
Passan: The left side of Detroit’s infield is not what one might consider championship-caliber. With Trey Sweeney getting most of the at-bats at shortstop, the Tigers are running out a sub-replacement player on most days. Third base is even worse: Detroit’s third basemen are barely OPSing .600, and while they might have found their answer in McKinstry, relying on a 30-year-old who until this year had never hit is a risky proposition.
Schoenfield: I’m not completely sold on their late-game bullpen — or their bullpen in general. No doubt, Will Vest and changeup specialist Tommy Kahnle have done the job so far, but neither has a dominant strikeout rate for a 2025 closer and overall the Detroit bullpen ranks just 25th in the majors in strikeout rate. How will that play in the postseason against better lineups?
With one month left until the trade deadline, what is the one move the Tigers should make to put themselves over the top?
Doolittle: The big-ticket additions would be a No. 3 or better starting pitcher or a bona fide closer — the same stuff all the contenders would like to add. A lower-profile move that would really help would be to target a shortstop like Isiah Kiner-Falefa, whose bat actually improves what Detroit has gotten from the position just in terms of raw production. But he also adds contact ability, another stolen base threat and a plus glove. For the Tigers to maximize the title chances produced by their great start, they need to think in terms of multiple roster-filling moves, not one big splash.
Keown: Prevailing wisdom says to beef up the bullpen and improve the offense at third base, which would put names like Pete Fairbanks and Nolan Arenado at the top of the list. But the pitching and offense are both top-10 in nearly every meaningful statistic, and I contend there’s an equally good case to be made for the Tigers to go all in on a top-line starting pitcher. Providing Sandy Alcantara a fresh environment would deepen the rotation and lighten the psychic load on Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize. (Every word of this becomes moot if the MLB return of 34-year-old KBO vet Dietrich Enns is actually the answer.)
Passan: Bring Eugenio Suarez home. The third baseman, who currently has 25 home runs and is slugging .569, signed with Detroit as an amateur in 2008 and spent five years in the minors before debuting in 2014. That winter, the Tigers traded him to Cincinnati for right-hander Alfredo Simon, who, in his only season in Detroit, posted a 5.05 ERA in 187 innings. Suarez’s power would fit perfectly in the Tigers’ lineup and is robust enough to get over the fence at Comerica Park, one of the largest stadiums in MLB.
Schoenfield: This is the beauty of the Tigers: They can go in any direction. As good as the offense has been, it feels like several of these guys are ripe for regression in the second half: Baez, McKinstry, maybe Torkelson and Gleyber Torres. That group is all way over their 2024 level of production. If those guys fade, an impact bat might be the answer. But is one available? Arenado certainly isn’t an impact bat anymore and might not be traded anyway. Maybe Eugenio Suarez if the Diamondbacks fade. But the likeliest and easiest answer: bullpen help.
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