Hurricane Katrina has made it clear that the only support Tulane football has enjoyed over the past 50 years has come from non-alums, mostly from the New Orleans area. We often hear about the scattering of Tulane graduates throughout America, but they never seem to show up at football games. No matter where Tulane plays. And since Tulane is not playing in New Orleans this year, they have no following at games. And our local media won't see fit to bring their games to us on tv or radio.

Observer Wrote:Hurricane Katrina has made it clear that the only support Tulane football has enjoyed over the past 50 years has come from non-alums, mostly from the New Orleans area. We often hear about the scattering of Tulane graduates throughout America, but they never seem to show up at football games. No matter where Tulane plays. And since Tulane is not playing in New Orleans this year, they have no following at games. And our local media won't see fit to bring their games to us on tv or radio.

Cant say I agree with you. I am a Tulane alum and have supported the Wave best I can while I'm away from N.O. I dont go to home games, but when they're in the area I go. I donate to TAF and wrote in to Cowen during the review. I consider myself a loyal TU supporter even though I cannot physically be at the games. I believe there are many others like myself who live and die with Tulane athletics. I want to see us do well and succeed. This has been a trying year. Unprecidented, but we'll overcome it, maybe even be better off in the long run.

Probably true. The adage "out of sight, out of mind" comes to mind and a slow or nonexistant recovery of the area would not be good news for Tulane athletics or really for the university as a whole.

While it's great to get support from the out-of-town alumni there's got to be some limit to what Tulane can reasonably expect in terms of such support.

I remain convinced that it was the local politicians' involvement that gave the board cold feet in 2003 when they were almost set to send Tulane to Div. III and unfortunately one of the main people in that effort is not with us now in what may be an even greater hour of need.

The reports that Tulane intends to play road warrior a lot for the next few seasons to bring in cash don't leave me feeling encouraged even if it's accurate that they don't intend on ending D-1A football altogether in two weeks.

I can understand that this is something that even for 2006 they may well have no choice but to do given the lack of a home facility but this year definitely shows that you can hardly expect very much when every game is a road game.

You can't really blame OOT alums, because the "home" games were played in places where many New Orleanians were forced to relocate. Also, many of us had to cancel or change travel plans because of this, and flying to New Orleans is cheaper than flying to certain other small airports. We had a good turnout at Rice (making more noise than the Rice fans, according to some Rice people I know), and I would expect that we had a good showing at SMU. When TU plays in major cities, which is where many of us are located, we don't have problems. When we are at the Naval Academy or West Point, we don't have problems.

But Monroe? C'mon, ULM is there, and THEY don't get more than about 10K. And they are leading their conference.

Get off it.

Sophandros Wrote:We had a good turnout at Rice (making more noise than the Rice fans, according to some Rice people I know)...

:wave:

I think we were outnumbered at the Homecoming BBQ before the game too. Hope the Tulane folks had fun!