Having attended the New Orleans Bowl for the first time last year, I have a couple observations. New Orleans is all about the Sugar Bowl. There were banners hanging everywhere promoting the upcoming Sugar Bowl matchup, but none promoting the Ark St-La Tech N.O. Bowl matchup. It would have been nice to have seen a few New Orleans Bowl banners hanging in New Orleans, at least during the week leading up to the game. Another observation is that practically no casual local fans attend the game. I can compare that to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, where normally, at least 25% of the crowd is made up of casual local fans that turn out to support the bowl itself. Everyone in the Super Dome that night was wearing either Tech blue or Ark St red.

New Orleans Bowl officials recognize the need to place regional teams into its game every year and they're correct to do so. There would otherwise be very few fans attending the game and the bowl itself would struggle to survive. USM and ULL are each located two hours from New Orleans. Even though both teams will come into the game with 6-6 records, as far as attendance goes, there is no better bowl matchup of G5 teams in the country. The N.O. Bowl will never pass up the opportunity to have this matchup for its game, nor should they.