'08 title game adds to rich Big Easy legacy

• By LES EAST
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jan 3, 2008

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NEW ORLEANS — The latest chapter in this city’s long and noteworthy history of hosting significant college football postseason games will be written when Ohio State and LSU play for the national championship Monday in the Superdome.

Eventually the story of that game will take its place among dozens of others, dating to the first Sugar Bowl in 1935, inside the Historic New Orleans Collection in the French Quarter.

Last summer, the Collection became home to the official Sugar Bowl Archives and a display highlighting the history of the game is open free to the public through Jan. 13.

Tucked inside a series of museums and galleries on historic Royal Street, the Sugar Bowl display is a rare tribute to sports in this area.

Locals have frequented the exhibit since it opened in late November, but visitors for the Sugar Bowl and the BCS title game figure to stop by as they venture from their nearby hotels.

Amid places that usually highlight names such as Iberville, Bienville, Jefferson, Lafitte and Degas, are remembrances of names such as Manning, Bryant, Broyles, Bowden, and Spurrier.

The Sugar Bowl display is just a sampling of the entire Sugar Bowl Archives, which are permanently housed at the Collection’s nearby Chartres Street location, where they will be on display to the public in perpetuity.

Curator Rebecca Smith said the Collection has never had a display related to sports “to this extent” before. Like all displays at the Collection, this one is done “relative to the history of the city and the region.”

The display chronicles the history of the Sugar Bowl within an historical context, from its beginning at the end of the Great Depression, perseverance through World War II, evolution through the Civil Rights Movement, and rebirth after Hurricane Katrina.

Upon entering, you stare straight ahead at the nearly 200-year-old silver sugar bowl, a piece created in England and later donated to Mid-Winter Sports Association, which instituted the game. The bowl served as the original prize for the winning team.

There’s also a leather helmet and game program from the inaugural match-up, featuring Tulane and Temple, and pictures of Sugar Bowl standout performers such as Herschel Walker, Bo Jackson and Ken Stabler.

Among other events noted are the 1963 game before which 3.6 inches of snow blanketed Tulane Stadium, creating a unprecedented winter setting for the game; the appearance of Pittsburgh’s Bobby Grier, who broke the color barrier by playing in the 1956 game; and Fordham’s 3-0 victory against Missouri on Jan. 1, 1942, which took place less than a month after the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor.

Nearby you can see photographs and a team-autographed ball commemorating LSU’s 21-14 victory against Oklahoma four years ago, which gave the Tigers their second national championship.