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Bringing communities together can sometimes be a hard task, but the New Orleans Bowl has been managing to do so for over fifteen years. The New Orleans Bowl has been impacting fans, student athletes, and the state of Louisiana since 2001. The regional support the New Orleans Bowl has is massive with fans coming in from the surrounding areas and the economic impact. Many elements are taken into consideration when picking teams such as, their regionality, team records, whether a team has played in the bowl game recently, have the two teams played each other, and also the potential TV ratings. Billy Ferrante, Executive Director of the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl says, “the process of selecting a team, it’s really, it’s like putting a puzzle together and you have all these different pieces that have more or less value than the others and…at the end of the day you end up with the match up that you select. It’s a process that takes about seven weeks.” The New Orleans Bowl officials take into consideration the teams participating so they have as much live fan support as possible because of the easy drive and/or flight, which tends to bring in many visitors; that helps the economy of New Orleans. The money spent by fans in restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions will contribute to the $25 million the New Orleans economy.
Local businesses get to participate in some of the action too. Cody and Samantha Carroll are the chefs and owners of Sac-a-Lait restaurant, which is located about five blocks for the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and are excited about the crowd that bowl brings to their business. Samantha Carroll states, “the next two nights will be really crazy, we have all staff on hand.” The environment has a whole new atmosphere when the New Orleans Bowl comes to town. The outcome of what happens on the field will not be the only success of the weekend; hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions will benefit from all of the fans in town.
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