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.

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.

“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.”

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)