New Orleans - The Sugar Bowl

Now for the whole reason for the trip to New Orleans ... the Sugar Bowl! I'm not a huge football fan, but I have to say, this game was amazing. It was exciting and a lot of fun. We arrived at the Superdome a couple hours early. It is a huge stadium. It was sobering to think that just a few years ago it was used as an evacuation center and shelter to so many people during Hurricane Katrina. This was the scene when we arrived.

There were a lot more Alabama fans than there were Utah fans. 50,000 to 10,000 basically. Luckily we were sitting mostly around Utah fans. We did have to hear "Roll Tide Roll" every 5 seconds though. Oh well. We also had a visit from Utah's number one fan and Andrew's friend, Tom. It was fun to see a friendly face in N.O.

The pre-game show was pretty cool. I love big flags. Apparently the other side of the stadium was more important as they were able to see the flag right side up. Oh well.

Here we all are before the game starts.

The game started off great with a quick touchdown by the Utes. The Alabama fans told us all to "sit down" thinking that we were celebrating too soon. But it was not so.

Here we are at half-time, enjoying being in the lead!

Despite low expectations, the Utes played amazingly well. It really was the most exciting game that I have been to. By the end of the game, the Alabama fans had cleared out and the Utes were left to celebrate!

Yay for winning!

Utah 31, Alabama 17! Wow, what a win.

Number one!

Here we all are again, this time celebrating the win!

I was so happy that Utah won. The day of the game you could just see how the Alabama fans would just look at us and think how we didn't deserve to be there. Things were definitely different the next day. They couldn't even look us in the eye!

One of the highlights of the game was this guy that sat next to us. When he arrived at the game, he had already had way too much to drink. He quickly became Andrew's best friend, always hugging him, leaning on him, and entertaining us throughout the night. At this point in the game he had taken off his shirt and used it to wave around to cheer.

Here is a video of the celebration and of our new friend at the game.

We were excited to go to the game, regardless of the outcome. The win just made it that much sweeter! Go Utes!