Billboard Slogan of the Week, Game Five: "Exorcise the Demons"

BY TIM SCANDURRO, of Scandurro & Layrisson, LLC

Those who are relatively new to Tulane football may not realize what a House of Horrors A.K. Chapman Stadium in Tulsa, Oklahoma has been for us.  Our record in that venue is a miserable 2-7 and dotted with blowouts.  Our seven losses up there since 2006 have seen us outscored by an average of 44-18, with Tulsa topping 50 points three times and 30 points in all of them.  Most were effectively over at halftime.

Two of the losses were closer, excruciating affairs that went to double overtime.  A third was 13 years ago when Devon Walker sustained a devastating  injury in the midst of an uncompetitive  game we trailed 35-3 at half.

The enduring memory of these games for me is watching Tulsa spread us out with a modern, wide open perimeter stretching offense featuring a lot of speed (often carried on the legs of New Orleans metro area players, it seemed) and a lot of open space in the throw and run game, while we played the games in a phone booth full of quicksand.

The resurgence of our program under Willie Fritz started to change things.  Our last three trips there have been our three best defensive performances in that stadium.  We  won two of them, the loss coming at night in 2020 in one of the brutal overtime games I mentioned (and man, was it brutal). Even as we have improved and they have fallen back some, they always seem to play us tough, especially up there.

Look, we got poleaxed this past Saturday in Oxford.  There’s no sugarcoating it.  That makes the bad taste in all of our mouths from all those years of getting dragged by Tulsa even worse this week.  Go up there and eke out a nailbiter as a two touchdown favorite in the conference opener, and the taste is still there.  The mumbling and grumbling gets louder. 

I respect the invisible football gods who monitor how we talk about opponents, and I don’t want to jinx us.  So in homage to those gods, I’ll say a win is a win, and it’s always extra hard to win on the road.  We need to prepare hard and play hard to win Saturday.

But if the gods will forgive me, it sure feels like our team needs, and all of us need, to come together this weekend and take some frustration out on this opponent.  To re-establish our confidence, to re-establish ourselves as a force in this league, and to show that we are learning how to be a complete team, we need to come out and dominate this game from start to finish.  Back to back road games are hard, but you have a bye week coming up so keep the pedal down.  No more spotty road performances; no more onside kicks we have to hold our breath on.   Let’s extinguish some bad memories from last weekend and from so many prior trips to Tulsa.

As Coach is fond of saying, every week you either get better or you get worse.  You never stay the same.  We got worse last week.  We need to get a whole lot better this week, and an old nemesis and a stadium full of painful memories is where we need to do it. 

Good.  Time to flex.