Sadly Temporary: Really Late Sugar Bowl Post (keeping with the UL theme)

Most of our vacation/travel in the past few months have been UL related. For basketball we did a road trip to DC (to also visit with t), went to the Big East in NYC, and Atlanta for the Final Four. Before all of that, however, we went to New Orleans to watch UL play in the Sugar Bowl. My parents, oldest brother's family, and our family all were on the same charter to New Orleans a little before New Years Day.

(yes against my usual policy, we are all wearing the same shirt)

Here's mab's first trip in an airplane.

Here's cmb, he's an old pro. Interesting fact, his first trip in a plane was also to New Orleans.

Self photo in a mirror at the hotel.

Here we are with Teddy Bridgewater and Dr. James Ramsey... kinda

We had a few days to run around New Orleans, which is never a bad thing.

If you look in the above picture, cmb really wanted this stuffed alligator when we were walking around the French Quarter. j bought it for him, although I was a little concerned. After all, we were about to play the Florida Gators. Then we sat down for some lunch and this is what he started doing...

Little did we know that this was foreshadowing.

Back at the hotel with cmb and mab.

Day of the game we spent the early afternoon on the Steamboat Natchez. cmb loves water and splashing, so we had to smuggle rocks onto the boat for him to throw into the water. It was a bit cold with the breeze out on the deck, but we had fun.

They had a jazz band on the boat. cmb danced listening to them for a bit.

Messing with my new cameras out panorama feature. Still learning

Oh yeah, we were down here for a game. Thought the Mayhem comments were wishful thinking.

By the time game time rolled around the fans were pretty fired up. Here are the team buses as they're about to leave for the Superdome.

So, unlike our future trip (and previously blogged) trip to the Final Four, we had no expectations for the actual game. We were an inconsistent team in the sub-par Big East playing a team that was legitimately the 2nd or 3rd best team in the best league in the country. I figured due to Coach Strong's previous time working at Florida, the fact that Teddy had established himself as a legitimately great quarterback, and a possible let down by Florida, we might keep it respectable. I think that my text messaging to a Floirda alumni friend were basically of the lien of thinking. Keep it close, maybe sneak something at the end. So we went to the game in good spirits to have a good time.

Arriving at the Superdome

View from our seats, I was pretty shocked we got such great seats.

We had a good view of some friends on the upper level (guy in white was the kidnapee in the previous blog)

Hard to beat Ali (and Tom Jackson) representing your team.

So if you don't know or don't remember the results of the game, let's just say that the game played out perfectly for UL. On the first play from scrimmage, the Cards got a pick 6, and never really looked back. Teddy was stellar against the top rated defense in NCAA. The defense was more than solid. UL also scored on the first play from scrimmage in the second half. The final score:

and it wasn't that close. UL had their best game of the season when Florida likely had their worst.

On field celebration

MVP Teddy Bridgewater

A week or so after, UL had an event at the football stadium where you could get autographs and pictures with Sugar Bowl trophy (I think j posted that on facebook). cmb was just excited to get on the field.