When Jordan Clark attended the 2019 national championship game — the only College Football Playoff title contest hosted at Caesars Superdome — he prayed for the chance to play in a game of this significance.

Five years later, his prayers were answered.

Fate has given Clark, a Notre Dame nickel corner and Baton Rouge native, a chance to face No. 2 Georgia (11-2) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, which begins Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. on ESPN play.

The sixth-grader has been here before — a standout prep career at University High took him to two state title games in the Superdome — but this time is different. Clark and his Fighting Irish teammate Jaiden Ausberry, another former U-High star, will play in one of the most compelling Sugar Bowls in recent memory.

The Bowl has hosted numerous New Orleans matchups since 1935, including a national title and four CFP semifinals in the last 10 years. But no two teams from a 12-team playoff field have ever been invited to compete against each other, putting a place in the semifinals at risk.

“At the end of the day, it’s a football field,” Clark said. It doesn’t matter what they put around it. But it’s definitely not lost on me how much of a blessing it is. I’m very grateful to be able to go out and do what I love in front of the people I love.”

Clark’s father is former LSU safety and NFL player Ryan Clark. Ausberry, a redshirt freshman linebacker, is the son of longtime LSU athletics administrator Verge Ausberry. The two combined to help the Cubs win three Division II state championships in eight years – once in 2017, again in 2018 and again in 2021.

Both Clark and Ausberry took different paths to Notre Dame (12-1).

Everyone chose not to attend LSU. Clark spent the first five years of his college career at Arizona State University and then transferred to Notre Dame last December to play this season – his sixth and final year of eligibility. Ausberry signed with the Irish in the 2023 class and then redshirted his freshman season.

Now both are key contributors to the Notre Dame defense, which allowed the third-fewest points per game among FBS teams during the regular season. Clark recorded six tackles in the Irish’s first-round win over Indiana. Ausberry, Notre Dame’s fourth-leading tackler, stopped two Hoosier plays behind the line of scrimmage.

Now, Ausberry estimates more than 100 friends and family will see him make similar plays against Georgia in the first game he ever played in the Superdome. In 2021, U-High played its state championship game at Cajun Field in Lafayette.

“I think the fans are going to go crazy,” Ausberry said. “It always gets loud in the Superdome. I think it will be crowded too, so I think it will be quite a surreal experience at first, but once the game starts it will be like playing the game the way I always have. “

The two defenders never played on the same U-High team, but Ausberry said he knew in middle school that he wanted to emulate Clark, who is four years his senior. Clark signed with a power conference team and then redshirted his freshman season.

Ausberry was hesitant to do the same after signing with his own major college football program, according to Notre Dame linebackers coach Max Bullough, who said the decision helped Ausberry develop into a defensive back. who can now get significant snaps for a team with championship aspirations.

“I think it slowed everything down for him,” Bullough said, “in terms of him having to learn defense. “Coming in as a freshman, you have to learn how to be a person there. There you have to learn how to be a student. You have to learn how to get places. You have to learn our defense, which you never learned, and then things pile up.

“I think just being able to take a step back, that was a bit of a stepping stone.”

But could anything really prepare Ausberry to play in a game like this? That’s a question you can ask Clark, who has helped U-High win each of the two games it has played in the Superdome during his career. In 2017, the Cubs defeated De La Salle 45-19. In 2018, they defeated St. Thomas More 55-46.

Clark said the Dome was loud, even with a much smaller crowd than the one he and Ausberry will play in front of on Wednesday.

The feeling of representing his home state in an important game is what has haunted Clark since the end of his prep career in 2018 and the start of his college career in 2019.

“It’s always a great experience,” Clark said, “and it’s great to be back now.”