AI-produced: generated with AI tools and reviewed by Ayokunle Spencer.
The Sugar Bowl took the better part of a decade to talk into existence.
The idea of a New Year's Day football game in New Orleans was first put forward in 1927 by Colonel James M. Thomson, publisher of the New Orleans Item, and his sports editor, Fred Digby. New Orleans had the weather, the hotels and the appetite for a party; what it lacked was a reason for a football team to travel there on January 1. Every fall after that, Digby called for action in print, and he gave the still-imaginary game its name: the Sugar Bowl (Sugar Bowl, "Bowl Beginning").
For years nobody moved. Then, on February 15, 1934, the New Orleans Mid-Winter Sports Association was formally organized, and by late October it had $30,000 in escrow to stage the thing (Sugar Bowl, Fred Digby profile).
The first game
On December 2, 1934, the association's executive committee met at the New Orleans Athletic Club and, after long deliberation, invited Tulane, unbeaten in the South, and Temple (Sugar Bowl, "Bowl Beginning"). Tulane, 9-1, would host. Temple, unbeaten at 7-0-2, would come south.
The game was played on January 1, 1935, at Tulane Stadium. The NCAA record book, the Sugar Bowl's own history and Tulane all put the crowd at 22,026 (NCAA record book; Tulane Athletics). The box-score header on the Sugar Bowl's own recap page reads 22,206, with 22,026 in the story beneath it (Sugar Bowl game recap). Each team took home $27,800.
It was, technically, a home game. Tulane was playing in its own stadium, which nobody seemed to mind.
Temple led 14-0 and looked like the better team. Then came the play that made the Sugar Bowl's reputation in its first hour of existence. Tulane's Johnny McDaniel fielded a Temple kickoff at his own 10, drew the coverage toward him, and lateraled to Claude "Monk" Simons, who went down the sideline for the touchdown. The Sugar Bowl and Tulane both record it as an 85-yard return (Sugar Bowl game recap; Tulane Athletics). Tulane scored twice more and won 20-14.
3-2
The second Sugar Bowl, on January 1, 1936, drew 35,000 — roughly 13,000 more than the year before (NCAA record book). LSU and TCU played it after three straight days of rain.
TCU won 3-2.
That is a real final score in a real football game, decided by Taldon Manton's 36-yard field goal in the second quarter (Sugar Bowl game recap). It remains one of the strangest results in bowl history. The crowd growth mattered more at the time: two years in, New Orleans had proof that Digby had been right.
Out of Tulane Stadium
The Sugar Bowl stayed at Tulane Stadium for four decades, through the game of December 31, 1974. The next one, on December 31, 1975, was played in the Superdome, which has been its home ever since, with one exception (NCAA record book).
It has left New Orleans exactly once. After Hurricane Katrina damaged the Superdome, the game of January 2, 2006 was played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, where West Virginia beat Georgia 38-35 (NCAA record book). It returned to the Superdome in January 2007 (Sugar Bowl, "Bowl Beginning"). The city that invented the game to draw visitors spent that winter unable to host it.
The SEC game
More than any other bowl, the Sugar Bowl belongs to a conference. The connection was there from the first game, which Tulane reached by winning a share of the SEC title (Sugar Bowl, Claude "Monk" Simons profile). It became formal in 1975, when the bowl announced an agreement with the Southeastern Conference to send its champion to New Orleans; the first game played under it was on January 1, 1977, Georgia against Pittsburgh (Sugar Bowl, "Bowl Beginning"). That gave the game its identity: if you won the SEC, you went to New Orleans.
That arrangement loosened under the BCS and again under the College Football Playoff, where the Sugar Bowl rotates as a quarterfinal or semifinal site. But the association with the league never really went away.
Where it stands
The Sugar Bowl shares second-oldest status with the Orange Bowl and the Sun Bowl, all three dating their first games to January 1, 1935.
The most recent edition was a CFP quarterfinal on January 1, 2026, and it was the best game of that round: Ole Miss beat Georgia 39-34, scoring 20 points in the fourth quarter and winning on a 47-yard field goal with six seconds left. It sent Ole Miss to its first Playoff semifinal.
Ninety-one years earlier, a sports editor had spent the better part of a decade trying to convince his city that a football game in January was worth the trouble. About twenty-two thousand people showed up to the first one. The game has not been short of an audience since.
