NEW ORLEANS – The last time Notre Dame and Georgia met on a football field with this high of stakes, Ronald Reagan had not even taken office just yet. “Dallas” was the top show on TV. Radios were still playing the final days of disco. And “9 To 5″ with Dolly Parton was No. 1 at the box office.
It’s been a long time since New Year’s, 1980. But Georgia fans – and very likely, Notre Dame fans – who were watching back then still remember running back Hershel Walker, then just a freshman, putting his stamp on the game with a two-touchdown, 150-yard performance.
And guess what? It was at the Superdome in New Orleans.
The two football powers will meet again today at 4 p.m. Eastern / 3 Central on ESPN in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, as coach Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs (11-2), champions of the Southeastern Conference, will face coach Marcus Freeman’s Fighting Irish (11-1) with a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals, the final four, on the line.
The season ends for today’s loser. But for the winner: a trip to Miami and the Orange Bowl, and one step closer to a national championship.
The winner of this game will face Penn State in the Orange Bowl; that much was decided on Tuesday night. And the other semifinal, Texas vs. Ohio State, will happen in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl.
But Georgia and Notre Dame had to wait an extra day, cautiously so, due to what authorities believe was a terrorist attack in the early-morning hours of the new year, on Wednesday morning. A man drove a truck into a crowded area in New Orleans, then exited the truck with a weapon and began firing into a crowd, and at police. The gunman was killed in a shootout with the authorities, but with reason to believe others were involved in planning the attack, and explosive devices found at the scene, officials suggested the Sugar Bowl be postponed a day. And so here we are.
Georgia won’t have quarterback Carson Beck, who was injured in the Bulldogs’ SEC Championship win in Atlanta on Dec. 7, an elbow injury for which Beck has already had season-ending surgery, and announced he’ll be moving on to the NFL Draft.
Instead, it’ll be in-state high school star Gunner Stockton, who came off the bench to finish the SEC title game against Texas, that will get the start. Stockton, a five-star recruit, hasn’t played all that much all year, although he did take a vicious hit against Texas that drove him out of the game. Beck re-entered just long enough to hand off to running back Trevor Etienne and win the contest.
That won’t be the case on the other side, as Fair Hope, Alabama native Riley Leonard will lead the Irish in the contest, as he has all season. Leonard, who helped Notre Dame engineer an upset of Texas A&M in the season opener and thrash Indiana last week, has thrown for 2,293 yards and 17 touchdowns this season, and rushed for 15 touchdowns and 751 yards.
Leonard and company will face a Georgia defense, coached by guru Smart, that has long been one of the nation’s best, ever since Smart came over from Alabama, where he was the defensive coordinator under Nick Saban.
Notre Dame has won 11 straight games since a shocking home loss to Northern Illinois in September.
