A Home Game for the Sugar Bowl
Paul Hoolahan ’ 72 remembers the stench, World War II, and Hoolahan was determined Hoolahan. “The last thing
so foul and toxic in the 102-degree heat to make this survival symbolic for the rebuild- we wanted to do was, in
that he and his Sugar Bowl associates had ing of New Orleans. Their first choice was to any way, hurt the people of profile
taken tetanus shots and donned gloves, boots play at Tiger Stadium on LSU’s campus about Louisiana ... or abandon
and hazmat suits to enter their offices in the 90 miles away in Baton Rouge. But Baton them or defect.” After all, the Sugar Bowl, first
Louisiana Superdome, which had been ravaged Rouge had only 10,000 hotel rooms, and played at the old Tulane Stadium on Jan. 1,
by Hurricane Katrina and then ransacked by most of them were housing displaced people 1935, was as much a part of the New Orleans
looters in the aftermath of the September and FEMA workers for the foreseeable future. landscape as Mardi Gras and the French Quar-
2005 devastation. With the Georgia Dome the second, and ter and had an economic impact of $175 mil-
Anything of perceived value had been most viable, option, Hoolahan held out hope lion to $200 million each year.
taken, everything else pretty much destroyed, of playing the game at LSU. But on Oct. 7, With the help of the Atlanta Sports Council
and the work of a full-time office staff and 2005, the Sugar Bowl committee rendered its and the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau,
120 volunteers strewn about like it had been difficult and emotional decision to move the and by deputizing hundreds of volunteers from
hit by, well, a hurricane. Amazingly, the single- game to Atlanta, pledging proceeds to the the Peach Bowl two days earlier, the 2006
bottle wine cooler, an English artifact from recuperation and rebirth of its home city Sugar Bowl sold out and went off with West
1830 that served as the Sugar Bowl trophy,
sat unscathed in its protective case. Hoolahan
carried it out and called it a symbol of moving
forward.
When New Orleans was evacuated in the
days before Katrina hit, Hoolahan took his
wife and three daughters to Houston. He
already wondered where the 2006 Sugar Bowl
would be played if the Superdome was damaged beyond immediate repair. Then, the
worst hurricane disaster in American history
exceeded his worst fears. Sugar Bowl Executive Director Paul Hoolahan ’ 72 congratulates Auburn University Tigers after the 2005 Sugar Bowl win. The
Hoolahan was among the earliest evacuees 2006 Sugar Bowl moved to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina; in 2007, the event is back home in the Superdome.
to return. He found the family’s home half
under water; learned that their beach house in
BARR Y LAWRENCE
Hoolahan, the former All-ACC tackle at
Carolina and the executive director of the
Sugar Bowl since 1996, was by then in the
quick-thinking mode that made him one of
the smartest, if smallest, offensive linemen in
college football when he opened holes for All-
American Don McCauley ’ 71.
Bay St. Louis, Miss., had been leveled to the
concrete slab; and saw that what remained of
the Superdome had been turned into the
world’s largest homeless shelter. The Energizer
bunny known to everyone when he was at UNC
as simply “Hoolie” began rolling out personal
and professional Plans B through Z.
His wife, Katherine, a former news anchor
and reporter for WTVD in Durham, would stay
in Houston with Megan, then 9. Kate, 16, and
Molly, 14, returned to New Orleans and lived
with high school friends whose families had
avoided the worst of Katrina. Meanwhile, with
a bowl game scheduled in less than four
months, Hoolahan and eight members of his
staff collected any salvageable files and set
up temporary headquarters in Atlanta.
They wanted to make sure the 72nd Sugar
Bowl was played somewhere, preferably in the
state of Louisiana. After all, the bowl already
had been through the Great Depression and
through programs such as the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and the Bring Back
New Orleans Fund.
“We were hyper-diligent in our efforts to
stage the game in Louisiana,” Hoolahan said,
adding that the information he received from
the hotel and hospitality industry convinced
him that playing the game in Baton Rouge
would be, at best, a crap shoot.
So Hoolahan and the eight other staff
members, who also left their loved ones
behind and moved into the Omni Hotel in
Atlanta, became their own new family, meeting and eating together and working late into
the night as they kept their eye on this one-time prize. The fact that they were removed
from the recovery effort back home made
them feel guilty for working on something as
trivial as a football game but determined to
stage an event that would help keep the
nation’s focus on New Orleans.
“A very difficult position to be in,” allowed
Virginia edging Georgia, 38-35.
In March, the Sugar Bowl staff returned to
New Orleans and, while the Superdome
remained under repair, moved into temporary
digs in nearby Metairie. Later that spring,
Hoolahan’s family was reunited in their home,
although everyone had to live upstairs while
water repairs to the ground floor were completed.
On Sept. 25, the Superdome reopened
with the NFL Saints hosting Atlanta on ESPN’s
Monday Night Football. And on Nov. 4, the
73rd Sugar Bowl, with new corporate sponsor
Allstate replacing Nokia, announced its official
return to New Orleans, where Notre Dame
played LSU on Jan. 3. Hoolahan said he
looked forward to sharing the same tears and
hugs with staff, family and friends who all
somehow survived the previous 15 months —
and came away stronger but resigned that life
would never again be quite the same.
