(This is a version of an official editorial of the Advocate/Times-Picayune, Dec. 9)
Even a decade ago, any mention of the Tulane University football team seriously competing for the national championship would have sounded like the punch line for a joke. Now, though, people are smiling on Tulane’s behalf rather than laughing at it.
All of Louisiana should congratulate the Green Wave for reaching the championship playoffs and creating a second program in the state (in addition to LSU) that consistently competes at such a high level. Congratulations also are in order for the manner in which this New Orleans university has handled the coaching carousel that is now a trademark of college football.
Finally, please allow us this slightly puckish suggestion: Isn’t it time for Tulane and LSU to resume an annual rivalry?
Let’s recap: This season marks the seventh in the past eight in which Tulane will play in a bowl game. It’s record in the last four years is 43-12, and three years ago it won an epic 46-45 Cotton Bowl victory over a traditional powerhouse, the University of Southern California. This is heady stuff for a program that in the prior 19 years had won only 78 of 225 games.
Tulane earned its trip to the playoffs this year even as head coach Jon Sumrall is leaving for much greener financial pastures at the University of Florida, a school with some 40,000 undergraduates compared to Tulane’s 8,500. Tulane and Sumrall, though, are handling the transition with composure and class, with Sumrall enthusiastically continuing to coach the Wave into the post-season.
Louisiana, meanwhile, benefits from being a state known for two consistently winning programs, not just one. With player recruiting being a national rather than regional matter these days, it behooves a state to look like a football mecca, with the two programs mutually reinforcing that impression.
All of which leads to the benefits that can accrue to both schools if they renew their once traditional annual game. Just as the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn drives home the impression of that state’s football supremacy, a game between LSU and Tulane could become a national drawing card for both.
People forget just how big a deal the Tulane-LSU game once was. After Tulane fell a single yard short of upsetting LSU at the end of the 1972 season, the 1973 rematch drew an astonishing 86,598 fans – which then by far was the largest football crowd ever in the South. The rivalry remained supremely competitive for the next nine years, with LSU winning six to Tulane’s three, with two of LSU’s wins being nailbiters within three points.
Imagine what a huge and beneficial spectacle – what a helluva hullabaloo – such a renewed in-state rivalry could be.
Either way, as Tulane enters the playoffs, let’s all say a very hearty “Roll, Wave!”
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