From Super Bowls to Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali to ‘Last Resort’, the SuperDome has seen it all

New Orleans – Spring 1982. Sixteen seconds over in the NCAA final, and a meager first -year student from North Carolina buries a sweater that delivers a championship and changes his life.

He appeared that week in New Orleans as Mike Jordan. He left like Michael.

At that time, the vast steel building that became the stage of the arrival of Jordan in the national consciousness-the seven-year-old Louisiana Superdome-Bood to grab the theater within his walls. In November 1980, while the seconds at the end of the eighth round of the World Welterweight Championship, boxer Roberto Durán, the Sugar Ray Leonard had to go around the ring, waved his glove to the referee and stumbled to his corner. “No Más, no Más,” Durán muttered. It was the first time that a world champion had voluntarily admitted the title in 16 years.

Two years earlier, the same stadium witnessed the last of the 56 professional victories of Muhammad Ali, a unanimous decision about Leon Spinks who took the WBA heavyweight title back.

Pete Maravich ran the break here. Keith Smart’s Jumper won the title here Indiana. Chris Webber called a time -out that he did not have here.

In 1978 the location organized the first prime-time Super Bowl. Thirty -five years later the lights went out in another. Tom Brady won his first here; Brady’s Idol, Joe Montana, won his last here.

In 1981 the Rolling Stones performed for 87,500 – then a record audience for an indoor concert. The pope visited. Presidents too.

But for native New Orleanians, nothing corresponds to the night of the blocked point of Steve Gleason, to make a city feel whole again.

Not after the destruction was caused when Hurricane Landed Katrina on August 29, 2005. While dikes flooded and parishes, the super dome “a refuge of the last resort” for displaced persons became. Thousands crammed with nowhere else to turn around. The plumbing failed. The air conditioning has failed. Vicious winds pulled parts off the roof. Urine on the floor swollen. Blood stained the walls. Allegedly a man jumped to his death from a stadium balcony.

A city was left behind, his citizens scars, his iconic stadium battered.

Twelve months later the super dome was restored and with that New Orleans. Doug Thornton, executive president of ASM Global, the company that runs the stadium, saw Saints fans last through the gates in the night of the home opener with tears that roll down their cheeks. “They never thought they would come back,” he says now.

What followed was a moment so symbolic that the team founded a statue to commemorate it.

After forcing the Atlanta Falcons in a three-and-out possession of the game, Gleason was constructed to block a point attempt by Michael Koenen. Saints teammate Curtis Deloin restored the ball when he rolled in the end zone for a touchdown in New Orleans who started a Cathartic party. “I have never been louder in a stadium than that,” ESPN’s Mike Tirico later told NFL films.

The eighth super bowl of the SuperDome arrives on Sunday; No other stadium has organized more than six. It is proof of the rarest of American sports locations, one that has passed the test of time despite a large number of factors fighting against lifespan, including architectural progress and the worst mother of nature. More than that, in the middle of the era of state-of-the-art stadiums of billions of dollars, call less and fewer NFL franchises to the center.

The saints still do that. And so New Orleans prefers it.

“I spent half of my life in this building,” says Thornton, whose office has been super dome in the past 28 years in the since then again. “We have always made jokes that New Orleans considered the Superdome as the living room. Here we look at our children in high school. There we come together for Saints games. For monstertruckrallies. For all these major events we organize every year such as the Sugar Bowl.

“People simply worship this place.”

Macie Washington tends a bar at Walk-Al on a few blocks of the stadium. New Orleans without the super dome? The thought lingers a few moments in her mind. She becomes quiet. She is never considered.

“Everything that happens in the dome, we feel it here,” she says. “It’s the heart of our city.”

Considering similar locations established in the same era, during what was then a new wave of American ingenuity: Houston’s Astrodome (opened in 1965, closed in 2008), Detroit’s Pontiac Silverdome (open 1975, closed in 2013); Kingdome in Seattle (open 1976, closed in 2000); Minneapolis’ Metrodome (open 1982, closed in 2013), RCA Dome of Indianapolis (open 1984, closed in 2008). Everything except the Astrodome have been troubled.

The SuperDome is still standing, and thanks to a recent facelift of $ 557 million that spread over four NFL seasons, will have a different look for Super Bowl Lix. According to Jay Cicero, President and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. “If that is not proof that they want to stay, I don’t know what it is.”

Cicero does not mean that you stay in New Orleans. He means staying in the super dome.

“To continue to plan and finance renovations in the stadium instead of breaking it down and building a new one?” Cicero continues. “That just talks about how important it is for New Orleanians.”

Get deeply

Roger Goodell praises Saints’ transparency about connection with the Archdiocese

Thornton says that the original price tag for the building, as early as 1967, was around $ 42 million. But due to his long -lasting unveiling from 1975, the costs had risen to $ 160 million. It was a means to a goal. The city wanted an NFL franchise. The legend has long, competition commissioner Pete Rozelle, told the businessman of New Orleans, Dave Dixon – who led the push – that his city could have a team as long as it was a critical condition.

“It is better to build a stadium with a roof because of all the thunderstorms,” ​​said Rozelle.

Dixon required. Louisiana founded the largest dome -shaped stadium in the country. The building covers 13 square hectares. At its top the roof is 273 feet off the floor. “Two million square feet under the roof,” says Thornton. “When it was opened it was twice as large as the Astrodome.”

It is also the fifth oldest active stadium in the NFL and will climb to the fourth after the accounts leave the Highmark stadium in the coming years (and third as the Beren ever left Soldaatveld). The recent renovations, encouraged by Benson and the Saints organization, have modernized the facility and opened the competitions for easier movement.

“It now looks more like a nightclub versus a Coliseum,” adds Sam Joffray, who spent 25 years at the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation and designed the first website of the stadium in the mid -1990s. “It is a rather amazing example of what can happen if you continue to reinvest in a location instead of tearing it off.”

One message will be plastered in the city this week, from the beads that volunteers hand out at the airport to signposting along the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center: This is what we do. New Orleans is proud of his ability to organize large events, and in the middle there is the colossal stadium – a short walk from almost everywhere in the city center – that transformed the potential of the city from the moment it was opened.

“The SuperDome has put New Orleans on the map,” says Thornton. “Before it was built, our large industries were oil and gas and shipping. Now our large industries are tourism, oil and gas and shipping.

“I always make jokes,” he continues, “that as soon as someone comes here for the Super Bowl, they have handed a hurricane of Pat O’Brien’s at the airport and they go to the French neighborhood and they never leave.”

Just like Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Madison Square Garden in New York, the SuperDome has forged a unique intimate relationship with a city and its residents. “We are not the largest market in the world. We are actually quite small compared to most NFL cities, “says Cicero. “But we can compete for these major events and organize these great events, and it starts with a really great, great location. The SuperDome is only part of the structure of New Orleans. “

That is why the saints are not interested in finding a new house.

That is why the Super Bowl continues to find its way back to New Orleans.

“This community has such a way to put its mark on it,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell earlier this week when he was asked why the Big Easy remains such a consistent player in the Super Bowl -rotation of the competition. “I think people here wrap their arms around it and make it better. I think we realized that this is a place that is a bit perfect for the super bowl. “

(Illustration: then Goldfarb / Athletics; Photos: Aaron M. Sprecher, Manny Millan, Bob Rosato, James Drake / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)