Game Two, Billboard Slogan of the Week: "Tried and True"

BY TIM SCANDURRO

Tulane University puts a lot of effort into teaching incoming freshmen the lyrics and cadence of the “Hullaballoo.”  All our football players know it too.

But the true mark of a diehard is someone who also knows the words to “Roll Green Wave,” sometimes formally known as “The Olive and the Blue.”  The first two lines are:

“Here’s a song for the Olive and the Blue,

  Here’s a cheer for the team that’s tried and true.”

The lyrics provide the Scandurro & Layrisson, LLC Game Two Billboard Slogan of the Week:  Tried and True.

The expression “tried and true” dates back quite a long way and originally referred to the characteristics of a wooden plank.  Board lumber that is “tried” has a perfect right angle between the top of the board and its edge, which can be checked with a try square.  A board that is “true” is perfectly flat, and can be trued if necessary by planing.  You can’t tell by just eyeballing the board; you need to take its measure.

The same is true of a football team before its first game.  You can THINK you have a good team on paper, and you can LOOK like a good team in practice, and we at FTW weren’t bashful about saying both.  But until you take the measure of a team against a real live opponent in a game that matters, you just don’t know. 

Last Saturday we were able to take the first real measure of the 2025 Tulane football team.  Had we known before kickoff that we were going to lay the wood to a Big Ten team to the tune of a three-score margin and hear our head coach lamenting afterwards that we had left a lot of “meat on the bone” offensively, every one of us would have taken it. 

We know a little more about who we are this week than we did last week.  So do the sharps who backed Northwestern, bet the game line down from 6.5 to 4.5 points, and are eating mayonnaise sandwiches this week for dinner.

This is a new week and a new challenge, and this team is not close to a finished product.  But it sure looks like a keeper, the kind of quality material that can be worked with to NOLA-build something special.  Something tried and true.

It’s a slogan for all of us.  For you Tulane football fans who have been on this journey for a long time, you understand what “tried and true” means.  Heaven knows we’ve all been tried over the years.  And we all know at least one former Tulane fan who was tried one time too many and just gave up and never came back.   But if you’re reading this and you’re a member of FTW, you kept the faith.  Your support helped build this coaching staff and this football team, quite literally.  You are tried and true by definition. 

May each one of us ever remain so.