WAVE OF THE FUTURE
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This story originally appeared in the Times Picayune on 10/25/02.
Reprinted by permission.
By Ted Lewis and Marty Mul?
Staff writers/The Times-Picayune
Tulane gets to put its best foot forward Saturday -- both outside and inside Tad Gormley Stadium.
Outside it's the much-anticipated homecoming in City Park, a move from the constraints of the Superdome to a shady setting featuring traditional tailgating, a parade and the kind of atmosphere the rest of the college football world enjoys every week but Tulane fans haven't had at home games in 28 years.
Inside it's a chance for the Green Wave to extend a victory streak to four games for only the second time in 23 years.
"You can feel the excitement," said Joe Cali, president of Greenbackers booster club. "You can see people coming to the games feeling like we're going to play well instead of being surprised if we do. And then we've got this unique event to go with it.
"Maybe we can get the rest of the city's attention. We sure need to."
Ah, there's the rub.
While the combination of setting and success has the Green Wave faithful at their most enthusiastic since the magical undefeated 1998 season, the major hurdle for Tulane remains -- can it extend that excitement across the New Orleans area?
It hasn't been easy. The home opener against Southern, bolstered by the Jaguars' strong following, had an announced attendance of 40,337, while the Texas game drew 46,6798 -- with the Longhorns' fans enjoying an overwhelming advantage in the stands. But the bottom has fallen out for Tulane's past two home games, neither of which had "special event" status. The announced attendance for the Cincinnati and UAB games was 19,575 and 19,343 respectively, but school officials concede the number of people at those games was less than half that.
"Sometimes it's frustrating," Cali said. "We're doing things to try to get people's attention and we're not getting it.
"If it don't work, it's time to throw up our hands and say, 'Well, it's not a product they're interested in.' And I don't know where we go from there."
That's not likely to happen. Tulane football has survived for 110 years and isn't in danger of being disbanded.
Still, this is a time the school is seeking to redefine its position in both a changing local and national landscape for college football. With so much attention and television revenue flowing to schools in the six power conferences affiliated with the Bowl Championship Series -- the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC, plus Notre Dame -- finding fans and finances can be difficult for a private university playing in a non-BCS conference.
It hasn't been easy for Tulane to find its niche, although school officials have been clear about the Green Wave's goals.
"I think our fans do recognize that we are a little different animal," said Athletic Director Rick Dickson. "We want to have successful, financially stable programs while at the same time not sacrificing our academic standards.
"Our fans understand that and take a lot of pride in it. They want to know that they're not throwing their support, passion and money down a hole where it doesn't make any difference."
That's why football success like the Green Wave is currently enjoying is so vital.
"First of all, it reinforces your belief that you are trying to rebuild with the right coach doing things the right way," Dickson said. "And it gives the people who support our program something tangible to see for their support, and that's very important.
"You feel better for everything you're trying to do when your most visible program is having success. If you get football successful, all of a sudden you've got an audience's attention for the other things you perhaps wouldn't have otherwise."
A football town
Dickson is right. While Tulane is having success in other sports, most notably baseball and women's basketball, football remains the sport by which many judge the Green Wave athletic program.
"This is a football community," said John Koerner, chairman of Tulane's Board of Administrators. "But we've got to compete with the Saints, we're not in a high-profile conference and TV gives you a very good 50-yard line seat just by staying at home.
"And then we're an academic institution trying to maintain an identity in our athletic program, while frankly there are others we compete with who are nothing but farm clubs for the pros. So there are a lot of stresses pulling at us."
This season, despite the drop-off in attendance after the first two games, Tulane is averaging 31,483 in attendance. The figure does not account for "no-shows," people who have tickets but do not attend the games. No-shows are a factor at any college football game, but often represent a significant number within the announced attendance at Green Wave home dates.
Still, Tulane officials want to sell tickets, regardless of who is buying them or whether they show up at the games.
"We've set a goal this year of averaging 30,000," said Dickson, who has two more games in the Superdome after Saturday's at Gormley. "We don't care that much if a lot of it comes from Southern or Texas; let's just do it.
"This program has got to get in the 32,000-35,000 range on a consistent basis. Getting close to that this year will be a huge stride for our program."
It's not that Tulane isn't trying to market its program, but it lacks the resources and support the Saints and now the Hornets have.
"We're turning over every rock and stone," Dickson said. "I'll go play outdoors. I'll go play on a riverboat.
"It's like walking up to a corpse. You've got to shock it to see if you can get a pulse. And then from there you can start nurturing it back to health."
Tulane launched a ticket package promotion that included the Texas, Southern, Navy and Southern Mississippi games for $100, but fewer than 1,000 were purchased. The school also offers family packs allowing four people to attend all Green Wave home games for $150.
A two-game series against Southern, a predominantly black university, was an attempt to appeal to the black community, and several hundred youngsters belonging to the Fellowship Foundation were guests at Saturday's UAB game.
Stronger efforts to increase student attendance also have been made.
Almost every student receives tickets as a part of an activity fee, and busses are provided from campus to the Superdome. The number of students who attend the games varies widely, although they are included in the attendance total.
Scheduling attractive games is an approach favored by Chicago-based sports marketing expert Mark Ganis.
"The best strategy for a school in Tulane's position is to play as many big-name opponents at home as possible and hopefully pull an upset every now and then," he said. "Even then, it's extremely tough for colleges in urban areas whose programs aren't viewed as top-tiered to maintain their identity and generate more support."
Finding new areas of support is a top priority. "One things you hear is that we've got to get younger," said associate athletic director Scott Sidwell. "You've got to appeal to the kids if you want to build your fan base. We feel that if we continue to market to families, over time we will have success."
But attracting families isn't easy, especially since the 2:30 p.m. Saturday kickoff time conflicts with many family activities, such as soccer, not to mention the day's top national games are airing on television at the same time.
Dickson has said he's not married to the afternoon kickoff and would consider going back to the school's traditional nighttime starts. He'd also love to have one or more of the team's future games as part of Conference USA's package of weeknight games carried on ESPN.
Unpopular home
A bigger factor is the Superdome itself, which seems to be Tulane's only viable choice for its home games despite dissatisfaction among some fans and students.
The Dome seems to swallow a typical Tulane crowd. The past year's average paid attendance ranked 107th in Division I-A in percentage of capacity. Even with this year's increase, it's still 105th.
Tailgating is allowed on the top level of the Superdome parking garage, but open flames are not permitted. Plus, the combination of no shade and essentially being on a rooftop makes Tulane tailgating a brutally hot experience for early-season games.
"I've always been concerned that the Superdome is not the ideal venue for college football, even though it's obviously a first-rate facility," said university president Scott Cowen. "It's too large, so there's no motivation for anyone to buy a season ticket.
"It has very much a professional sports feel to it. It's also very inconvenient for our students."
Judging by their lack of attendance, the students seem to agree.
"No one likes the Dome," said Christopher Johnson, a sophomore from Boise, Idaho. "You hear we need it because it's an NFL facility and it helps us get great athletes.
"But even if we get a great crowd for us, it's only half-filled. We have a lot of people from other areas who grew up going to college football games that felt like college football games, but we don't have that here."
A band might help. Tulane is the only school in Division I-A without one.
Dickson said he is aware of the situation, but thus far has not been able to come up with a solution, although the basketball pep band is expected to play Saturday at Gormley.
Ganis said Tulane would be wise to support the Saints' desire for a new outdoor stadium, much as the University of Pittsburgh did for the Steelers, to maximize tailgating facilities and other amenities. Pitt now plays its home games at the Steelers' Heinz Field.
Still, bands and tailgating are no substitute for the best marketing element of all -- consistent winning.
If that can be defined as at least three consecutive winning seasons, that's something Tulane has accomplished only once in the last half-century, from 1979 to 1981.
That lack of sustained success has made Tulane's support fragile.
In 1999, coming off the perfect season of the year before, the Green Wave lost its opener at USM 48-14. A week later, Tulane played its home opener against SMU and drew an announced crowd of 20,097, down more than 17,000 from the attendance in the 1998 regular-season finale against Louisiana Tech.
So even a team that appears to be bowl-bound, such as this year's edition of the Green Wave, has trouble winning over the skeptics.
Wright Waters, former assistant athletic director at Tulane under Mack Brown who returned to New Orleans in 1989 as commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, said he was struck by how much Tulane's presence in the community had diminished.
"Back in '88, we could walk downtown and people would stop us and ask, 'How's Tulane football?' or what were we going to do about basketball," he said. "There was excitement, especially on game days.
"Take Hap Glaudi's show. Everybody listened to Hap and Hap talked about Tulane. Buddy (Diliberto) doesn't do that. It's just different."
Perception hurts
A big difference is the increasing gap between the way BCS and non-BCS schools are perceived.
"Division I-A is broken into two groups -- the haves and the have-nots," said Tulane faculty athletic representative Gary Roberts. "Our disadvantage in competing for football players is not academics. It's because the BCS system does not allow us to tell kids you can play for the national championship if you come here.
"Athletics is an integral part of Tulane's image, and given hindsight, it was a mistake not to position ourselves at the forefront of it."
It doesn't help either that Tulane always seems to be compared to LSU, its rival now in name only. If there was a sure sign that Tulane had dropped from a true football rival to LSU, it was when LSU determined it could make more money by having an additional home game than to play the Green Wave on a home-and-home basis.
Dickson, who came to Tulane from a Washington State, a BCS school, understands the difficulty of not being in the BCS, but he cannot offer assurances that it will change.
"Maybe the dividing line shouldn't be that, but it is," he said of the BCS/non-BCS split. "There are some things within your bailiwick you can control and there are some things that happen outside of it that have an impact here.
"My focus has been that I make sure I that position us as well as we can so that if and when change is affected that people are not making decisions for us."
Despite's this year's success, at least on the field, and although there is the strongest support for the program in years from the president's office and board, the sharp divisions created by the BCS system have bred elements of doubt among some Tulane officials.
"We've got to admit that we can't compete with the BCS schools under the system as it exists today," Koerner said. "It bothers us that the students don't seem to care as much and that while a lot of older people have interest, we've lost the younger ones.
"We've got to figure out if times have changed and they only care about nationally competitive programs. You have to wonder if our costs to stay in I-A are projectable to infinity, and if maybe we should be giving scholarships to geniuses and not athletes."
Still, Dickson said, while patience isn't always easy to muster, he has faith it will be rewarded.
"We've still got some work to do," he said of the football attendance numbers. "But just like on the competitive side, it's not going to come overnight.
"Too many people want to talk to me about what used to be, but I can't change that. We're coming back, and what you're seeing this year is starting that seed to grow."
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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.
10/25/02
? The Times-Picayune. Used with permission.
