ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - More than 70,000 fans united at the Sugar Bowl on Thursday, just one day after a terror attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

A moment of silence was held prior to kickoff ahead of the national anthem. After the national anthem, the crowd broke out in chants of U-S-A, U-S-A.

Ticketed fans in Georgia and Notre Dame gear packed a plaza adjacent to the Superdome and enjoyed music under clear skies — and the watch of snipers on rooftops — before filtering into the stadium for Thursday’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Sugar Bowl.

“It was a lot of fun. It felt safe,“ said Shannon Horsey, a Georgia fan in her 40s who lives Austin, Texas.

”Coming in they searched by bag thoroughly. So I felt like, ‘OK, they’re really paying attention.’”

Joe Horsey, a Georgia graduate, found the pre-game crowd larger than he expected, but the “energy lower than a normal football game.”

Meanwhile, Horsey found opposing fans were being somewhat more polite to one another than usual.

“SEC football can get nasty on game day and can get a little raucous,” he said. “But there’s a little different sense of civility and that there’s bigger things than football.”

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