NEW WAVE
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Reprinted by permission.
By Ted Lewis and Marty Mul?
Staff writers/The Times-Picayune
It's not easy being the Green Wave.
For Tulane, a private school with an overwhelming number of its students -- and therefore alumni -- from outside the New Orleans area, it's a daunting task to attract fans to a cavernous stadium to see a college football team that has averaged one winning season every four years since 1960.
Then there is its league, or more important, longtime fans' memories of what used to be Tulane's league. From 1933 to 1965, the school played in the tradition-heavy Southeastern Conference. Deciding it could no longer compete, the Green Wave left and for decades struggled to establish itself as a strong Southern independent, finally abandoning the strategy when it joined the newly formed Conference USA seven years ago. While C-USA offered the school the opportunity to play for conference championships, its far-flung members -- 14 schools in 12 states, plus Army in football -- has thus far stirred little fan interest.
Even when Tulane won the C-USA crown in 1998, fans didn't respond in overwhelming numbers. When the Green Wave played Louisiana Tech in the final regular-season game of the year with a chance at a perfect record, the crowd at the Superdome was announced at 37,391. Tulane averaged 27,984 that year in paid attendance for home games.
Another challenge: With a prestigious academic reputation, Tulane insists its athletes also be students. The school boasts one of the highest graduation rates in the nation for athletes. Yet it is at a recruiting disadvantage to schools in its own league, since C-USA does not require uniform academic standards among its member institutions.
Then there is the money. Tulane is no different from the majority of other Division I-A schools, where dramatic increases in spending for facilities and coaches' salaries, not to mention the demands of gender equity, have created unprecedented financial pressures.
For the person responsible for charting the course of Tulane athletics, it can seem overwhelming.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to move a mountain that hasn't moved in about 50 years," said Rick Dickson, Tulane's athletic director since 2000.
And yet, despite the numerous challenges, there is a distinct air of optimism about the program, easily the most in more than 20 years. In Dickson, Tulane supporters believe they've landed the leader the school has needed, a long-term planner who has a vision of what the Tulane athletic program can be.
A 5-3 start to the football season doesn't hurt either. "I think we're doing all right," said Larry Israel, a member of the board of administrators whose family has been involved in Tulane affairs for decades. "We've got a very competent group of coaches and administrators, especially Rick Dickson.
"He's something special -- the best we've ever had. People sometimes get too pumped up or too down about football, but when you look at all our sports, we're better off than we've ever been."
Making strides
Indeed, while fans often judge college programs by high-profile sports such as football and basketball, a close look at all sports shows Tulane is having a relatively high level of success on the playing field.
In the seven years since Conference USA came into being, Tulane ranks third in the conference in NCAA appearances in all sports, fourth in tournament championships and fifth in regular-season championships.
The memories of the school's 2001 College World Series appearance are still fresh. The women's basketball team has made eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances. The football team will become bowl eligible with a victory against Navy at Tad Gormley Stadium on Saturday.
The program is doing even better in the classroom. Recent NCAA graduation rates reports ranked Tulane 11th among Division I-A schools for all athletes (70 percent) and tied for fifth in football (80 percent).
Financially, while Tulane's athletic department will run a deficit projected at $1.6 million in real dollars this year, President Scott Cowen has said that is an acceptable level that the rest of the university can support. Furthermore, giving to the athletic department, especially on the grass-roots level, is up significantly, and Dickson has put a major effort into developing new major contributors.
Also, after a year's delay, a major renovation to the baseball stadium is expected to begin next summer.
Even long-simmering faculty hostility toward athletics, stemming mostly from a men's basketball scandal in the 1980s, has slowly faded.
Perhaps most important, there seems to be an acceptance by most supporters of the realities that Tulane faces in finding its niche. If Tulane athletics aren't what they were 50 years ago, they're better than they have been in a long time. "I think we're in pretty good shape for the conference we're in." said Gary Roberts, the school's faculty athletic representative and a noted authority in sports law. "I'm proud of where we are, especially when you consider where we've come from.
"You don't see our kids getting arrested every week. We don't have football players raping girls in the dorm. We've got good kids who go to school."
Or as fan Al Ferro puts it, "You have to play with the cards you're dealt. If we can get to just one or two bowl games per decade and be competitive in other sports, especially baseball, I'm a happy customer because I know exactly what I'm dealing with."
Special events
Yet a college athletic program, regardless of its relative level of success, cannot thrive without support.
Dickson is pursuing a strategy of using special events, either due to novelty or the name of the opponent, to attract a generation of lost fans, a situation created as much by changing times and changing demographics of the school and the community as a lack of competitive success, especially in football.
"The city responds to events," he said. "You create a buzz, get people to come to events and then hope they become regulars.
"When you're trying to pump some lifeblood into a program that needs lifeblood, you look at the options available and the options you can create."
Dickson's event getting the most attention happens Saturday with the homecoming football game against Navy. It's the Green Wave's first outdoor home game since the school abandoned Tulane Stadium for the Superdome in 1975.
The outdoor setting will enable fans to do what they can't at the Superdome -- enjoy open-flame tailgating in the shade of the City Park oaks. There'll also be a parade through Roosevelt Mall and several other pre-game activities.
"That's what we've missed as a community," said Steve Ballard, who played wide receiver at Tulane from 1989 to 1992. "Part of the experience of going to a football game should be breaking bread, partying and communicating with people.
"You do that and you build relationships; you build support for the program. At Tulane, we've lost touch with that."
Dickson agrees.
"The level of interest in our community, especially our support base, has been dormant for decades," he said. "I think a lot of it ties back to the time we gave up our facility and with it a lot of deep passion and tradition.
"We've lost a generation, possibly two. This is a chance to turn back the clock, hopefully recapture some ones we've lost and possibly attract the piece we've missed -- young families coming with their kids."
Dickson's "special events" philosophy has included previous home football games this season against Southern and Texas that both drew announced crowds of more than 40,000, the baseball game against LSU in the Superdome this spring that drew an NCAA record crowd of more than 24,000 and an upcoming basketball game against Kentucky in the New Orleans Arena.
The Gormley game has raised speculation that it could be a test run that could result in the school funding a renovation of the stadium to use for most if not all of its home games or perhaps building its own off-campus facility. An on-campus stadium has been deemed all-but-impossible.
However, that does not appear to be the case, except for holding homecoming at Gormely annually.
The Superdome, according to Cowen, is not a good venue for college football because of its off-campus location and the fact that most Tulane crowds are swallowed up in it. But it appears to be the only available option.
"It is highly unlikely that in my lifetime at this institution we will ever build a stadium anywhere," Cowen said. "You are speaking about spending tens of millions of dollars to do that while I feel quite honestly those dollars can be better used for better purposes at the institution.
"Now if a donor came and said, 'Here's $60 million and the only way you can use it is for a new stadium,' then you might think twice about it. But short of that, we wouldn't do it."
Still, the idea is out there.
"We need a campus-like environment," said John Koerner, chairman of the board of administrators. "The shade and greenery of City Park might fill that role.
"We have to see what kind of feedback we get from this game, and then we'd have to modernize Gormley. But I promise you, we could raise the money."
More feasible is a multipurpose arena, seating about 8,000, which would be built in the area along Claiborne now occupied by Rosen Hall if those students could be relocated. Such a facility is part of a master building plan, but Cowen said realistically it is at least five or six years away.
Finding fans
Getting more people to come to whatever facility Tulane is playing in is another matter.
The core fan base isn't growing. When Tulane draws 30,000 or more fans to a football game, it may be maximizing its audience.
Of the school's 105,000 living alumni, about 30 percent live within 100 miles of New Orleans. And that number is likely to drop: The percentage of Tulane undergraduates from Louisiana is currently at about 20 percent, meaning the local alumni total will only decline in future years.
And not all alums are sports-minded.
"People don't come to Tulane for athletics," said Mac McCallom, a 1971 law school graduate. "You've got people who got to certain schools because they've got winning programs.
"I'm sure we don't attract those students."
Or as Peter Katz, a current junior from New York, puts it, "It wouldn't make any difference to me if we're in Division I or Division XII.
"I'm not interested in college football or any sport."
The school is making efforts to regain its "Streetcar Alumni," but it's a tough sell, given the competition for discretionary spending on sports, made even more so by the arrival of the NBA Hornets, but for other forms of entertainment as well.
A losing image in football doesn't help, nor does Tulane's image as a school that is beyond the price range of many local people.
"I have a nephew at Tulane and one of his friends there once asked me, 'Why do people in New Orleans hate Tulane?' " said Danny Brasseaux, a longtime local fan. "That was the impression he had gotten from people here in the city.
"People feel they can't afford to go to Tulane, so they don't bother to support Tulane. I don't think they know how much Tulane contributes to the community, and I don't know if that's ignorance or Tulane not doing a good PR job."
The indifference is discouraging to many, including the players, who notice that even Tulane students don't turn out in force for home games.
"That bothers me. It's always a topic of conversation among the players," said kicker Seth Marler. "You wonder why you go to class every day, you associate with them and then you turn around on Saturday and they're not there."
Israel, the board of directors member, said the lack of a fan base -- and lack of support from what should be the Tulane fan base -- remains a major issue.
"One of our biggest problems is apathy among students as well as the people of New Orleans," Israel said. "That really hurts us and to me it's terribly puzzling and frustrating.
"I hear that about 30 I-A schools are increasing the size of their stadiums and here we are talking about getting smaller."
To associate athletic director Soctt Sidwell, it's a matter of context.
"What standard are you holding us to?" he asked. "An NFL team that sells out the Superdome? A program up the road (LSU) that is one of the top five nationally and fills its stadium?
"Take us for what we are and put us in the right perspective. We're selling a product and our product is approximately 300 student athletes. That's what we are."
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Ted Lewis can be reached at tlewis@timespicayune.com or 826-3405. Marty Mul? can be reached at mmule@timespicayune.com or 826-3405.
10/24/02
