NEW ORLEANS — For an idea of the, um, neutrality of this year’s Bowl Championship Series title game site, we bring you Wednesday, arrival day for No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Louisiana State. Ohio State’s bus pulled up to the team hotel along the Mississippi and was greeted by about dozen reporters, a few hotel personnel and a potted plant.
A few hours later, accompanied by a police escort with sirens blaring, LSU arrived at its hotel bordering the French Quarter and was greeted by hundreds of chanting LSU fans, the school fight song and a security detail seemingly borrowed from the White House.
If this were a presidential election, LSU would win in an embarrassing landslide. It’s only a football game. However, Monday night’s showdown is for the national championship and LSU (11-2) may have an advantage before Ohio State (11-1) even steps on the field.
“Man, it was crazy,” said LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey, who could not get up the escalator without kissing an exuberant, demanding fan. “I enjoyed it. It’s good to see our fans come and support us, travel with us. It’s making me excited just to play in the game.”
By the luck of the draw, LSU always seems to play in this thing when the BCS bowl rotation hits New Orleans. Four years ago, an underdog LSU team walked into a Superdome with two-thirds of the crowd wearing purple and upset top-ranked Oklahoma 21-14 for the national title.
That was not a neutral site. It was a de facto LSU home game. LSU’s Tiger Stadium would win most polls as the noisiest in college football. Put that crowd in a domed stadium 80 miles from campus, give the fans New Orleans’ nocturnal advantages to get them ready and you have an atmosphere unlike any other bowl game.
LSU is 3-2 in the Superdome in Sugar Bowl games, and 12-4 in all games here. The Tigers are 4-point favorites in Monday’s game. Don’t think the venue didn’t play a part.
“They say if you’ve played in a dome, this is even louder than any dome you’ve played in,” Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said. “But again, that’s exciting. We’ve practiced hard for noise situations throughout this entire year. Because the Big Ten is a pretty noisy place.”
It’s not this noisy. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium comes close because it seats 107,000, but Michigan Stadium’s design lets out too much noise and Minnesota rarely fills the Metrodome. LSU and Ohio State were both allotted only 16,000 tickets, with the rest up for grabs. Ohio State fans are famous for finding bowl tickets, but LSU fans have a geographic advantage.
“Around the city and everything around the game, I believe that there’s going to be a big advantage,” LSU quarterback Matt Flynn said. “It’s in our backyard, and we have so many fans out there.”
Ohio State hasn’t played in the Superdome since beating Texas A&M 24-14 in the 1999 Sugar Bowl.
“It’s definitely an advantage,” said Matt Mauck, who quarterbacked LSU in the title win over Oklahoma and lives in Denver after a stint with the Broncos. “It’s almost like a home game. You couldn’t walk down the street without people coming up to you.
“I remember going to practice and going down the escalator through all these people. It was like a pep rally. There were 500 people in the lobby. They were singing, doing chants.”
LSU coach Les Miles, of course, isn’t making much of it. He knows the fans cooking Cajun sausage for 24 hours outside the stadium and screaming for 60 minutes inside can’t catch or throw a forward pass.
“I don’t think home-field advantage affects outcomes of games,” Miles said. “(But) this is a home where we’ll definitely be more comfortable than our opponent.”
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
