Louisiana's Big Week

In one swoop last week war blacked out three of California's brightest sport attractions: Pasadena's Rose Bowl football classic, San Francisco's East-West all-star game and the opening of Santa Anita, world's richest horse-race meeting. While California businessmen mourned the loss of a possible $20,000,000, the citizens of New Orleans cheered and chortled.

In a carnival spirit usually reserved for its Mardi Gras, the New Orleanians prepared to add the war-orphaned East-West football game* to the seven lusty events (all for $10) that already constitute Sugar Bowl week. Sugar Bowl week is only seven years old. But it has already challenged the prestige of Pasadena's 25-year-old Rose Bowl. Nucleus of the program is a New Year's Day football game between the two best college teams available (at a guarantee of $70,000 apiece to their athletic departments).

This year, in addition to the Fordham-Missouri game, and the adopted East-West game the following Saturday, Sugar Bowl week includes a track meet (exhibiting the country's top-notchers from Leslie MacMitchell down), tennis matches featuring Don McNeill, Jack Kramer, Ted Schroeder and other top-ten amateurs, a basketball game between Tennessee (Southeastern Conference champions) and Long Island University (Madison Square Garden champions), boxing matches, crew races and a sailing regatta on Lake Pontchartrain. Months ago, New Orleans hotels were already turning down reservations for Sugar Bowl week. Last week beds were being set up in Turkish baths.

Besides its Sugar Bowl program, New Orleans has still another sport to offer: horse racing. Its historic Fair Grounds, rescued from oblivion last winter by a syndicate of local citizens headed by creosote-rich Sylvester W. Labrot Jr., may once again become a center of winter racing. Last week, anticipating an exodus of thoroughbreds from Santa Anita, President Labrot ordered 300 new stalls built, got ready to welcome California's war refugees.

* The Rose Bowl game will be transplanted to Durham, N.C. where Duke University, the pre-Pearl Harbor guest, turns host.

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