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Why Notre Dame, Georgia Pushed for Early Start Time to Sugar Bowl

Stephen Douglas

Fans line at the front desk of the Sheraton hotel after the Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed after an attack on Bourbon Street.
Fans line at the front desk of the Sheraton hotel after the Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed after an attack on Bourbon Street. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images
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The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will take on the Georgia Bulldogs in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on Thursday afternoon. The game was originally scheduled for Wednesday night, but was postponed in the wake of tragedy on Bourbon Street early on New Year's Day.

Reporting live from New Orleans, ESPN's Laura Rutledge shared the latest with Mike Greenberg on Get Up on Thursday morning. Rutledge described the meeting that took place between Sugar Bowl officials, College Football Playoff committee, city officials, FBI and the teams.

"The reason why they landed at 4 p.m. ET, 3 CT, is because there is an extremely quick turnaround for whichever team wins this game into the Orange Bowl," said Rutledge. "Which is a week away. So less time to prepare for the team that will play Penn State in that game. As you said so well, all of that pales in comparison to what happened here and the tragedy, certainly, that occurred, but these teams did have to think about the schedule and doing what's best for the athletes and everybody involved, right? So that was a long meeting that happened yesterday, mid-day, where they were trying to figure out exactly what they would do and the postponement of 24 hours. At first we thought that meant it would be a true 24 hours. It would be a game happening tonight. But we started to get the word that both teams especially were pushing toward the earlier start time. As early possible start time for today."

The Orange Bowl is scheduled for the evening of Thursday, January 9.

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Stephen Douglas
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in media since 2008 and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Douglas spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and previously wrote for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.

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