Sugar Bowl to Host Florida State and LSU
for Allstate Louisiana Kickoff
Caesars Superdome | September 4, 2022
The Allstate Sugar Bowl, in partnership with Allstate and the Louisiana Office of Tourism, will serve as the host to LSU and Florida State when the teams meet for the Allstate Louisiana Kickoff to open the 2022 college football season over Labor Day weekend (Sunday, September 4) in the Caesars Superdome. The game will be televised nationally by ABC and is scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff.
"We're pleased to have an exclusive window on ABC for the telecast of the Allstate Louisiana Kickoff," said Jeff Hundley, the chief executive officer of the Sugar Bowl. "We feel confident that the game will be a sellout and we're happy to showcase New Orleans and Louisiana to millions of college football fans as we celebrate the start of another great season."
A limited number of tickets remain available for the game.
With Labor Day Weekend being a traditionally busy weekend in New Orleans, the Sugar Bowl has established arrangements with a wide-range of local hotels to ensure fans attending the Allstate Louisiana Kickoff have the opportunity to book rooms at discounted rates.
"We're thrilled to be able to bring a regular-season game of this magnitude to New Orleans," said Ralph Capitelli, the Sugar Bowl President from 2019-21. "With LSU and Florida State in the Superdome, the national spotlight will once again be on New Orleans and the Sugar Bowl, and it will certainly mean good business for the city. Teams like LSU and FSU have options when it comes to games like this – we're glad they chose us."
While neither team is a stranger to the Sugar Bowl – LSU and Florida State have combined to make 19 trips to the Sugar Bowl – they have never lined up against each other in New Orleans. The Tigers have an all-time mark of 6-7 as their 13 Sugar Bowl appearances are the second-most all-time. The Seminoles have a 4-2 Sugar Bowl record.
The game ensures LSU a return trip to the site of its 2019-20 College Football Playoff National Championship – when it defeated another ACC foe, Clemson, 42-25, on January 13, 2020. The Allstate Sugar Bowl was a key part of the local host committee for the CFP title game after spearheading New Orleans' bid to host the game for the first time.
LSU has also earned a pair of national titles in the Sugar Bowl itself – it posted a 7-0 win over Clemson in the 1959 Sugar Bowl and won the BCS Championship in 2004 when it defeated Oklahoma, 21-14. The Tigers also won a national title in New Orleans in 2008 when they defeated Ohio State, 38-24, in the 2008 Allstate BCS Championship game – that first stand-alone BCS Championship was hosted by the Allstate Sugar Bowl, six days after the annual Sugar Bowl Classic.
Likewise, Florida State has captured a national championship in the Sugar Bowl – the Seminoles capped their first undefeated season with a 46-29 BCS Championship victory over Michael Vick and Virginia Tech in the 2000 Sugar Bowl, which doubled as a BCS Championship.
While the Sugar Bowl Committee sponsors a wide-range of events throughout the year, this will be the first time it has hosted a regular-season college football game. The Bowl has hosted two BCS Championship games (2008 and 2012) in recent years, while in 1942, the Sugar Bowl hosted the East-West Shrine Game for college football all-stars. That game had been moved from San Francisco due to fears that playing the game on the west coast could make it a potential World War II target.
The Sugar Bowl Committee received a crash course in the running of a kickoff classic when it stepped in to assist the Houston Texans with the operation of the 2017 Advocare Texas Kickoff, which was played in New Orleans on September 2, 2017 due to Hurricane Harvey.
The Allstate Sugar Bowl has established itself as one of the premier college football bowl games, having hosted 28 national champions, 100 Hall of Fame players, 51 Hall of Fame coaches and 20 Heisman Trophy winners in its 88-year history. The 89th annual Sugar Bowl Classic is scheduled to be played on Saturday, December 31, 2022. In addition to football, the Sugar Bowl Committee annually invests over $1 million into the community through the hosting and sponsorship of sporting events, awards, scholarships and clinics. Through these efforts, the organization supports and honors thousands of student-athletes each year, while injecting over $2.2 billion into the local economy in the last decade.