Sports
From Super Bowls to Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali to ‘last resort,’ the Superdome has seen it all
NEW ORLEANS — Spring 1982. Sixteen seconds left in the NCAA final, and a skinny freshman from North Carolina buries a jumper that delivers a championship and changes his life.
He showed up in New Orleans that week as Mike Jordan. He left as Michael.
By that point, the sprawling steel building that provided the stage for Jordan’s arrival into the national consciousness — the seven-year-old Louisiana Superdome — was used to gripping theater unfolding within its walls. In November 1980, as the seconds ticked away at the end of the eighth round of the world welterweight championship, boxer Roberto Durán, tired of chasing Sugar Ray Leonard around the ring, waved his glove at the referee and staggered to his corner. “No más, no más,” Durán muttered. It was the first time a world champ had voluntarily conceded the title in 16 years.
Two years prior, the same stadium witnessed the last of Muhammad Ali’s 56 professional wins, a unanimous decision over Leon Spinks that took back the WBA heavyweight title.
Pete Maravich ran the break here. Keith Smart’s jumper won Indiana the title here. Chris Webber called a timeout he didn’t have here.
In 1978, the venue hosted 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 in front of 87,500 — then a record crowd for an indoor concert. The pope visited. Presidents, too.
But for native New Orleanians, nothing will match the night Steve Gleason’s blocked punt helped make a city feel whole again.
Not after the devastation wrought when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. As levees broke and parishes flooded, the Superdome became “a refuge of last resort” for displaced citizens. Thousands crammed inside with nowhere else to turn. The plumbing failed. The air conditioning failed. Vicious winds peeled off parts of the roof. Urine pooled on the floor. Blood stained the walls. One man reportedly jumped to his death from a stadium balcony.
A city was left reeling, its citizens scarred, its iconic stadium battered.
Twelve months later the Superdome was restored, and with it, New Orleans. Doug Thornton, executive president of ASM Global, the company that runs the stadium, watched Saints fans file through the gates the night of the home opener with tears rolling down their cheeks. “They never thought they’d get to come back in,” he says now.
What followed was a moment so symbolic the team erected a statue to commemorate it.
After forcing the Atlanta Falcons into a three-and-out on the first possession of the game, Gleason laid out to block a punt attempt by Michael Koenen. Saints teammate Curtis DeLoatch recovered the ball as it rolled into the end zone for a New Orleans touchdown that kicked off a cathartic celebration. “I’ve never been in a stadium louder than that,” ESPN’s Mike Tirico later told NFL Films.
“Rebirth,” the statue commemorating Steve Gleason’s iconic 2006 punt block, was unveiled outside the Superdome in 2012. (Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images)
The Superdome’s eighth Super Bowl arrives Sunday; no other stadium has hosted more than six. It’s a testament to the rarest of American sporting venues, one that has stood the test of time despite a host of factors fighting against its longevity, including architectural advances and the worst Mother Nature has to offer. More than that, amid the era of multibillion-dollar, state-of-the-art stadiums, fewer and fewer NFL franchises call downtown home.
The Saints still do. And that’s how New Orleans prefers it.
Stadiums that have hosted the most Super Bowls
| Stadium | City | Super Bowls |
|---|---|---|
|
Caesars Superdome |
New Orleans, La. |
8 |
|
Hard Rock Stadium |
Miami Gardens, Fla. |
6 |
|
Orange Bowl |
Miami, Fla. |
5 |
|
Rose Bowl |
Pasadena, Calif. |
5 |
|
State Farm Stadium |
Glendale, Ariz. |
3 |
|
Tulane Stadium |
New Orleans, La. |
3 |
|
Raymond James Stadium |
Tampa, Fla. |
3 |
|
Qualcomm Stadium |
San Diego, Calif. |
3 |
“I’ve spent half my life in this building,” says Thornton, whose office for the last 28 years has been inside the since-renamed Caesars Superdome. “We’ve always joked that New Orleans viewed the Superdome as its living room. It’s where we watch our kids graduate high school. It’s where we come together for Saints games. For monster truck rallies. For all these major events we host every year like the Sugar Bowl.
“People just revere this place.”
Macie Washington tends bar at Walk-Ons a few blocks from the stadium. New Orleans without the Superdome? The thought lingers in her mind for a few moments. She grows quiet. She’s never considered it.
“Everything that happens in the dome, we feel it here,” she says. “It’s the heart of our city.”
Consider similar venues erected 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 (opened 1975, closed in 2013); Seattle’s Kingdome (opened 1976, closed in 2000); Minneapolis’ Metrodome (opened 1982, closed in 2013), Indianapolis’ RCA Dome (opened 1984, closed in 2008). All but the Astrodome have been razed.
The Superdome still stands, and thanks in part to a recent $557 million facelift that was spread across four NFL seasons, will have a different look for Super Bowl LIX. More than $100 million of that came directly from Saints owner Gayle Benson, according to Jay Cicero, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. “If that’s not proof they wanna stay put, I don’t know what is.”
Cicero doesn’t mean stay put in New Orleans. He means stay put in the Superdome.
“To continue to plan and fund renovations in the stadium rather than tear it down and build a new one from scratch?” Cicero continues. “That just speaks to how important it is to New Orleanians.”
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Thornton says the original price tag for the building, way back in 1967, was around $42 million. But by its long-delayed 1975 unveiling, the cost had jumped to $160 million. It was a means to an end. The city wanted an NFL franchise. Legend has it longtime league commissioner Pete Rozelle told New Orleans businessman Dave Dixon — who spearheaded the push — that his city could have a team so long as it met one critical condition.
“You better build a stadium with a roof because of all the thunderstorms,” Rozelle said.
Dixon obliged. Louisiana erected the biggest domed stadium in the country. The building covers 13 square acres. At its apex, the roof is 273 feet from the floor. “Two million square feet under the roof,” Thornton marvels. “When it opened it was twice the size of the Astrodome.”
It is also the NFL’s fifth-oldest active stadium and will climb to fourth after the Bills vacate Highmark Stadium in the coming years (and third if the Bears ever leave Soldier Field). The recent renovations, spurred by Benson and the Saints organization, have modernized the facility and opened up the concourses for easier movement.
“It looks more like a nightclub now versus a coliseum,” adds Sam Joffray, who spent 25 years with the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation and actually designed the stadium’s first website back in the mid-1990s. “It’s a pretty amazing example of what can happen if you keep reinvesting in a venue instead of tearing it down.”
NFL’s oldest stadiums
| Franchise | Stadium | Year opened | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Soldier Field |
1924 |
|
|
2 |
Lambeau Field |
1957 |
|
|
3 |
Arrowhead Stadium |
1972 |
|
|
4 |
Highmark Stadium |
1973 |
|
|
5 |
Caesars Superdome |
1975 |
|
|
6 |
Hard Rock Stadium |
1987 |
|
|
7 |
EverBank Stadium |
1995 |
|
|
8 |
Bank of America Stadium |
1996 |
|
|
9 |
Northwest Stadium |
1997 |
|
|
10 |
M&T Bank Stadium |
1998 |
One message is plastered throughout the city this week, from the beads volunteers are handing out at the airport to signage lining the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center: This is what we do. New Orleans prides itself in its ability to host major events, and at the center of that is the colossal stadium — a short walk from just about anywhere downtown — that transformed the city’s potential from the minute it opened.
“The Superdome put New Orleans on the map,” Thornton says. “Before it was constructed, our major industries were oil and gas and shipping. Now, our major industries are tourism, oil and gas and shipping.
“I always joke,” he continues, “that as soon as someone shows up for the Super Bowl here, they’re handed a hurricane from Pat O’Brien’s at the airport and they head to the French Quarter and they never leave.”
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 uniquely intimate relationship with a city and its residents. “We’re not the biggest market in the world. Actually we’re pretty small compared to most NFL cities,” Cicero says. “But we can compete for these major events and host these major events, and it starts with a truly amazing, amazing venue. The Superdome is just part of the fabric of New Orleans.”
It’s why the Saints have no interest in finding a new home.
It’s why the Super Bowl keeps finding its way back to New Orleans.
“This community has such a way of putting its stamp on it,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said earlier this week when asked why The Big Easy remains such a consistent player in the league’s Super Bowl rotation. “I think the people here wrap their arms around it and make it better. I think we’ve realized that this is a place that is sort of perfect for the Super Bowl.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Aaron M. Sprecher, Manny Millan, Bob Rosato, James Drake / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
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California filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department on Monday after officials demanded that the state’s public high schools confirm they will bar transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.
The state said in its lawsuit that the Justice Department had “no right to make such a demand” and cited “no authority which would allow them to issue or enforce the Certification Demand Letter” to each local education agency.
California defended the laws that have come into question, which allow athletes to participate in sports “consistent with” their gender identity and doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The lawsuit said the state’s bylaws “do not classify or discriminate based on ’biological sex,’ do not require schools to ‘depriv[e] [cisgender] female students of athletic opportunities and benefits on the basis of their sex,’ and do not effectuate any differential treatment on the basis of sex.
“Instead, allowing athletic participation consistent with students’ gender identity is substantially related to the important government interests of affording all students the benefits of an inclusive school environment, including participation in school sports, and preventing the serious harms that transgender students would suffer from a discriminatory, exclusionary policy,” the lawsuit added.
The state requested an injunction from the demand letter.
Last week, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital that public school districts must “certify in writing” by June 9 that they will not abide by the California Interscholastic Federation’s gender identity rules.
“Knowingly depriving female students of athletic opportunities and benefits on the basis of their sex would constitute unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause,” Dhillon wrote in the letter.
President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
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The California Interscholastic Federation governs public and private high school sports in the state and has a bylaw that requires its members to recognize gender identity in sports.
All students should be able to participate in school sports “in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student’s records,” the bylaw states.
Dhillon, a former California-based conservative attorney, said the certifications she is seeking from the public school districts will “ensure compliance” with Title IX and help them to “avoid legal liability.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement the lawsuit was filed “in anticipation of imminent legal retaliation against California’s school systems” failing to adhere to Dhillon’s demand, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“The President and his Administration are demanding that California school districts break the law and violate the Constitution — or face legal retaliation. They’re demanding that our schools discriminate against the students in their care and deny their constitutionally protected rights,” Bonta wrote. “As we’ve proven time and again in court, just because the President disagrees with a law, that doesn’t make it any less of one.”
The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The DOJ previously filed a lawsuit against Maine after the state repeatedly thumbed its nose at President Donald Trump’s executive order to keep males out of girls’ and women’s sports.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School poses with a gold medal at the CIF Southern Section Masters Meet in Moorpark, Calif., on May 24, 2025. (Kirby Lee/Getty Images)
The Justice Department accused Maine of “openly and defiantly flouting federal anti-discrimination law by enforcing policies that require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions designated exclusively for girls.”
The latest chapter in California between the state and the Trump administration came days after transgender athlete AB Hernandez won state championships in the girls’ division.
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ST. LOUIS — Growing up on the western tip of Cuba, Andy Pages excelled at every sport he played.
He was good at soccer and volleyball, arguably better at basketball. But he loved baseball for reasons that weren’t necessarily limited to the game.
Pages’ father, Liban, a carpenter who had a job repairing wooden boats, helped make his son’s first bats by hand, using leftover lumber given to him by friends. Soon baseball became the boy’s favorite pastime.
“When I was starting to play baseball in Cuba, when things were really bad, there were no bats. There weren’t things like that,” Pages said in Spanish. “So he always tried to make me a bat so I could play.
“I became more motivated, and from that point on, we’ve been playing baseball.”
The sport eventually proved to be a way off the island for Pages, who has emerged as one of the Dodgers’ brightest stars in just his second season with the team.
He entered the start of a three-game series Monday in San Diego hitting .288 with 12 home runs and 39 RBIs, trailing only Shohei Ohtani in homers and matching Ohtani for third on the team in RBIs. He’s also tied for second in stolen bases with six and has yet to be thrown out.
If he can stay consistent, he has a chance to become the first Dodger center fielder to hit better than .250 with 23 homers since Matt Kemp in 2012.
Although Pages never played in Cuba’s elite Serie Nacional, the proving ground for stars such as Yuli Gurriel, Yunel Escobar and Orlando “El Duque” Hernández, he became one of the country’s top prospects after hitting .364/.484/.581 in a under-15 league.
Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages rifles the ball to second base to prevent Arizona’s Ketel Marte from advancing on a single at Dodger Stadium on May 20.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
That convinced Pages (pronounced PAH-hays) he had a chance to be a big leaguer some day. So at 16, the Athletic reported, he arranged to be spirited off the island alongside Jairo Pomares, another young Cuban star, traveling through Guyana, Curacao and Haiti before crossing in the Dominican Republic. He then waited eight months before the Dodgers signed him as an international free agent in March 2018, giving him a $300,000 bonus, more than 1,500 times the average annual wage in Cuba, according to CiberCuba.
Pomares signed with the San Francisco Giants at about the same time, but while he remains in the minors, Pages’ climb to the majors was steady. He reached triple A by the start the 2024 season. He didn’t stay at Oklahoma City long, however, hitting .371/.452/.694 with 15 RBIs in 15 games to earn a call-up to the Dodgers.
Before his rookie season was over, Pages was a World Series champion. He paid a heavy price for that though, going seven years without seeing his family in person.
“It was emotional since I hadn’t seen them for a long time,” said Pages, 24, who returned to Cuba for the first time the winter before his big-league debut.
His sister, Elaine, a child when he left “was already a full-grown woman.”
“So those memories came back to me, and they were quite — how should I say it? — quite strong for me,” said Pages, who brought his father a few of the machine-made bats he used in the minor leagues.
But if his father provided the spark that made his son a baseball player, teammate Teoscar Hernández provided the help, guidance and mentoring that made Pages an everyday major leaguer.
“He’s played in the major leagues for a long time now,” Pages said of Hernández, a 10-year veteran who signed with the Dodgers months before Pages made his big-league debut. “He’s been through a lot of bad times. I went through that at the beginning of the season, for example, and last year too. And he’s given me advice that’s helped me a lot to get through that time.”
With Pages’ family still in Cuba, Hernández has become a big brother as well as a teammate, taking him out for dinner on off days or just getting together to play video games.
Andy Pages runs the bases after hitting a solo home run against the Athletics at Dodger Stadium on May 14.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“Getting through bad times is sometimes a little difficult when you’re alone, when you don’t have anyone to help you, to give you good advice, and to make you understand that sometimes things don’t happen when you want them to,” Pages said.
And that’s worked out well for Pages. Three games after Hernández returned from a rehab assignment last month, Pages started a streak in which he hit in 13 of his next 14 starts, including 11 in a row, raising his average 24 points to .293. He’s batting .379 with a team-high 11 hits in seven games this month.
“We try to go out to my house. We go out to a restaurant with my wife, his wife. Just so we can get together, have time to enjoy and not think about baseball,” Hernández said.
Pages isn’t the first player to benefit from Hernández’s mentorship. During his six seasons in Toronto, Hernández took another talented rookie, fellow Dominican Vladimir Guerrero Jr., under his wing. Guerrero is now a four-time All-Star.
Hernández is still so respected in Toronto when the Dodgers played there last season, some Blue Jays players wore his old uniform number during batting practice. Earlier this year Guerrero offered to buy him a $300,000 Richard Mille watch; Hernández joked he’d rather have money instead.
As the quiet Pages has grown more confident and comfortable with the Dodgers, his play has improved. A speedy outfielder with a plus arm, he also can play all three positions.
And while he left Cuba, he never fully left it behind, having expressed interest in representing the country in next year’s World Baseball Classic. The decision to go to the Dominican Republic as a teenager, after all, was a business one, not a personal one.
Pages would also like to bring his family to U.S. some day, though that dream was dealt a setback last week when President Trump signed an executive order restricting access to Cubans hoping to come to the U.S.
“Hope is always there,” said Pages, who has beaten impossibly long odds once. “But you have to follow the rules, get the papers, do whatever it takes to make sure everything’s OK. And then get here and stay here.
“I’m just trying, trying until they can leave.”
Sports
Jordan Love 'excited' to face Aaron Rodgers when Packers meet Steelers, hopes to exchange jerseys
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With Aaron Rodgers officially signing with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he’s set for some pretty fun reunions on the 2025 schedule.
Not only will he be facing his former New York Jets teammates in a Week 1 battle, but the Steelers will also be hosting the team Rodgers won four league MVP trophies with over his future Hall of Fame career.
And Rodgers’ Green Bay Packers successor, Jordan Love, can’t wait for the “Sunday Night Football” reunion.
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love (Lon Horwedel-Imagn Images)
The Packers and Steelers will square off on Oct. 26 at Acrisure Stadium in the primetime slot, and Love told Channel 3000 during his round of golf at the American Family Insurance Championship on Friday how much he’s looking forward to it.
“It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be awesome. I’m excited for it,” Love said. “I can’t wait to be on different sides, meeting up, and I know we’ll talk pregame, things like that. And hopefully we can exchange jerseys after.”
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Love was taken 26th overall in the 2020 NFL Draft, which shocked some considering Rodgers was showing no signs of slowing down under center.
Well, it seems to light an extra fire in his belly, as Rodgers went on to win back-to-back MVP awards in the 2020 and 2021 seasons while Love learned behind him as his backup. But in 2022, Rodgers saw his final season with the Packers after an 8-9 record, and Green Bay made it clear who was next up.
Love took all the lessons he learned from Rodgers and cemented himself as the team’s quarterback of the future, going 9-8 with 4,159 yards passing with 32 touchdowns to 11 interceptions in his third NFL season (first as the team’s starter).
Aaron Rodgers (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
The Packers signed Love to an extension before the 2024 season, and though he dealt with an early injury, he went 9-6 over his 15 games to lead his team to the playoffs as Green Bay went 11-6.
While Love is looking to keep stacking up playoff seasons, he was tapped into Rodgers’ offseason journey this year, saying he wasn’t “too surprised” to see him choose Pittsburgh.
“I was excited for him, that he was obviously coming back and going to be playing. There were also some rumors that he might be done, so just knowing he’s going to keep playing, that’s pretty awesome.”
Love reiterated what he’s said in the past about Rodgers, that he was a good mentor while they were teammates despite Green Bay drafting Rodgers’ successor.
After all, Rodgers went through it himself when he was drafted as Brett Favre’s replacement.
Jordan Love and Aaron Rodgers will be facing off against each other after the latter signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers. (IMAGN)
“I appreciate definitely the way A-Rod handled being in that situation, and I think a big part of it – which he told me – was he knew how it was for him being in that same position and the things that he went through and the way the situation might’ve been handled [differently]. I think perspective was: ‘I’m trying to go about this a little bit differently,’ which I think was awesome,” Love explained.
“In my time with A-Rod, we had a great relationship. It was awesome being in the same room with him, being able to learn.”
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