BACK TO BIG EASY
After stop in Vegas, Supe gets back to normal with return to NOLA next year
The big game is headed back to the Big Easy, with New Orleans set to welcome Super Bowl LIX in just under a year from now.
When next season’s AFC and NFC champions go marching into the Caesars Superdome on Feb. 9, 2025, New Orleans will tie Miami for the most times hosting the Super Bowl with 11.
The Cowboys, Steelers, Bears and 49ers are among the NFL blue bloods to win championships in New Orleans, which last held a Super Bowl in 2013.
New Orleans was originally scheduled to host the 2024 Super Bowl, but when the NFL season expanded to 17 games three years ago – and therefore pushed the league calendar back by a week — it created a conflict with Mardi Gras.
The NFL pivoted by awarding Sunday’s game to Las Vegas and shifting New Orleans’ turn to 2025.
Among the storylines already on the radar is the Hall of Fame candidacy of former Giants quarterback Eli Manning, a New Orleans native who is eligible for induction for the first time in 2025. The two-time champion will find out during the NFL Honors portion of next year’s Super Bowl week whether he was chosen in his first time on the ballot.
Manning never played in a Super Bowl in New Orleans, but several all-time great quarterbacks did.
The first was Len Dawson, who led his Chiefs to an upset 23-7 victory over the Vikings at old Tulane Stadium in 1970’s Super Bowl IV. Dawson, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, won MVP honors in the first-ever Super Bowl in New Orleans.
Two years later, Tom Landry’s Cowboys clinched the first Super Bowl victory in franchise history with a 24-3 shellacking of Don Shula’s Dolphins at Tulane Stadium. The championship was the first of two won by Landry and quarterback Roger Staubach, with the second also coming in New Orleans against the Broncos, 27-10, in 1978.
In 1975, the Steelers won their first-ever title in the last game at Tulane Stadium. Super Bowl IX saw the Steelers’ famed Steel Curtain outplay Minnesota’s similarly celebrated Purple People Eaters in a 16-6 defensive duel. The championship marked the first of four for quarterback Terry Bradshaw and running back Franco Harris, the latter of whom won Super Bowl MVP in 1975.
Super Bowl XV in 1981 carried extra heft, occurring five days after the Iran Hostage Crisis. The freed American prisoners were honored at what was then known as the Louisiana Superdome, where Jim Plunkett and the Raiders beat the Eagles, 27-10, to become the Super Bowl’s first wild-card winner.
Five years later, Mike Ditka’s decorated ’85 Bears entrenched themselves in NFL history by blowing out the Patriots, 46-10, in Super Bowl XX at the Superdome behind an elite defense still considered the standard for greatness.
In 1990, Joe Montana wrapped up the fourth of his Super Bowl titles in as many tries as his 49ers obliterated the John Elway-led Broncos, 55-10.
Brett Favre’s lone Super Bowl victory came at the Superdome in 1997, though it was Desmond Howard, who delivered a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown, who received MVP honors in the Packers’ 35-21 win over Bill Parcells’ Patriots.
The Patriots bounced back in 2002 with their 20-17 win over the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI at the Superdome. Little did the world know that the narrow victory would kick off a nearly two-decade dynasty led by first-time winners Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Adam Vinatieri nailed a 48-yard field goal at the final gun to upset the heavily favored Greatest Show on Turf.
More than a decade passed before the Super Bowl returned to New Orleans in 2013. It proved to be worth the wait.
Known as the Harbowl, Super Bowl XLVII saw John Harbaugh’s Ravens defeat Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers, 34-31, in an instant classic remembered as much for the brotherly coaching rivalry as it was for a second-half power outage at the Superdome. Beyoncé’s high-powered halftime show was not to blame for the lights going out, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said afterward.
Brady, Montana, Staubach, Favre and even Beyoncé are among the big names who starred when the NFL’s biggest stage took New Orleans. Only time will tell what next year’s return to the French Quarter has in store.