Game Twelve Billboard Slogan of the Week: Stay Frosty

BY TIM SCANDURRO

Thirty plus years ago we hired a young law student who had just graduated from the University of Notre Dame. He invited my wife and me up for a game in South Bend, where we watched Lou Holtz’s team beat Bobby Bowden’s Florida State team in one of those instant classics. Our young friend had played in the band there, and the weekend was as much about that group as it was the football team. He took us to their Friday rehearsal and we watched their pregame concert and march to the stadium with thousands of others. Years later my younger daughter (a Covid-year freshman) attended ND and we made it up for a few games. The marching band is still an integral part of a football weekend there. They still have the pregame concert on the steps of Bond Hall, the midnight drum circle, the trumpets under the Dome, and dozens of other traditions they put on display every fall. On that first trip to South Bend, our host asked me about Tulane’s marching band. “We don’t have one,” I told him. “We pipe in music at the Superdome.” You could tell he thought it was blasphemy, and it was. The marching band is college football, and for a good stretch of years after we moved downtown, we had no band at all.

That changed about 20 years ago when we hired Barry Spanier to put the band back together.  It started off small, but over the years he has grown it to over a hundred members strong and has turned a source of embarrassment into a point of pride.  They have restored many old traditions and brought in some new ones.

You don’t have to have a gigantic “Big State U” band, but you have to look good, sound good and represent the university well.  It has been great to see our band grow and flourish alongside our growing and flourishing football program.

Barry Spanier is retiring this year.  I don’t know the man, but I’ve admired his dedication and hard work for some time now.  From the atmosphere they create on game days to the pride we all feel as they march down St. Charles Avenue during Mardi Gras season, they’ve been a true game changer. 

When people leave us who have made our program better, it’s always bittersweet.  You never know what’s going to happen when they’re gone.  But when they give us everything they have and then some, as Barry did, they deserve our thanks.  Godspeed,  Mr. Spanier, wherever your next journey takes you.

Back to football.  All coaches have a series of expressions and quotes that they turn to often when addressing their team, some of them so often that the team can hear the first word and then finish the phrase in unison.  But new ones always come along. One of Coach Sumrall’s expressions this week has been “Stay Frosty,” a military term that connotes poise, control, calm discipline and resolve in the face of chaos.  The value of those mental assets in times of uncertainty and potentially lethal danger can’t be overstated. It’s our Billboard Slogan of the Week.

Applied to a football team, it means not getting swept along by the outside tide and the outside noise.  Keep your feet on the ground and your focus on the task at hand, and lean into your training and preparation. Our players are human beings, and young ones at that.  They hear it all, just like all of us do…and then some.  Staying locked in the way they have the past couple of weeks, and the way they will need to be Saturday night and (we all hope) beyond is no small challenge.  Think about how much YOU have thought about the future of Tulane’s football season and program beyond Saturday night, compared to the actual game against Charlotte, and you’ll have some perspective on the challenge the team has of staying in the moment.

But the moment is all we have.  “Don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself,” the Good Book says.  “Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Enough trouble, but enough joy and success too, for all of us, if our minds are right.  Like our favorite team, we’re at a time on the calendar where the university and the supporters of this program also need to stay frosty and take care of our business on and off the field as we head into this pivotal month of December.  Because no one else can or will, except us.

Stay frosty, my friends.