INDIANAPOLIS — Freezing rain had turned the downtown sidewalks here into granite-hard slip-and-slide tracks. A downtown concert stage and beer garden sat vacant, a dance and light drone show was canceled, and getting a restaurant table — even a socially distant one — was no problem at all on Saturday night.
It seemed that Georgia and Alabama football fans, many of whom had driven from Atlanta and Birmingham to avoid exorbitant airline fares and to squirrel away money for tickets to Monday’s national championship game, had decided after driving through ice storms that it was wiser to stay in their hotel rooms and order in.