God Bless the Students: A Scandurro Story

By Tim Scandurro

“The student section was big time tonight.  They brought a lot of energy.  You could just feel it on the sideline.” -- Jon Sumrall

The year before Yulman Stadium opened, I had a drink with legendary Texas high school coach Hal Mumme in the French Quarter.

Mumme was one of the godfathers, with Mike Leach, of the innovative ‘Air Raid’ offense.  Mumme’s offensive wizardry helped him climb the coaching ladder from Iowa Wesleyan to Valdosta State to the University of Kentucky.  His UK tenure ended in a recruit-buying NCAA scandal, presumably exposed by an SEC rival who didn’t like getting outbid by a basketball school.  A few years later his comeback tour resurfaced at Southeastern Louisiana, who Tulane defeated in the 2024 season opener on Thursday night.

That night in the French Quarter, I asked Mumme whether he thought our planned 30,000 seat on-campus stadium was too small.  “Let me explain something to you,” he said.  “With all due respect, those players don’t care that much about how many old people are in the stands.  What they want to see is their girlfriends and their fellow students packed into that stadium.  If you can turn those games into an event for the student body, your players will thrive off it and you can sell that atmosphere to any recruit.”

Tulane fans have a love-hate relationship with our student body.  When they don’t show up at games (yes, that used to happen), we moan and complain that they don’t like football or they don’t care or they choose to be fans of other schools.  But the real reason we moan and complain is because we know they’re the ones who bring the juice.  Say what you will, my fellow boomers, about their worldview or their wardrobes or their hair.   But the fact is that they punch way above their weight at our games. 

Last year, there was reportedly a near brawl involving stadium security because so many students were trying to shoehorn their way into the stadium to see the Ole Miss game.  They gave us an impressive, vocal sea of green to counter all the red in the stadium that day.  The year before that, they jumped the end zone wall and stormed the field when we won the conference championship, and by leading the way in that ecstatic celebration, gave a lot of us permission to break the rules and storm the field too.

They weren’t in the Glazer Club Thursday night before kickoff, eating jumbo shrimp and crab salad with us.  Long before kickoff they were standing in the South End Zone, packed shoulder to shoulder.  What a beautiful sight it was.  When Southeastern came onto the field, our students greeted them with a long, rolling chorus of boos.  Southeastern.  It was glorious. 

Don’t think the players don’t notice.  Watch them.   The coaches notice, too, which is why Coach Sumrall thanked the students first and foremost as he opened his press conference. 

I’ve had the good fortune to attend a lot of college football games in other places.  Whether the stadium seats 30,000 or 100,000, the students always set the tone and define the experience.  They stand up the whole game.  They’re passionate.  They’re fiercely tribal, in the best sense of the word.  They’re filled with the joyous exuberance of youth, among perhaps other substances.   When they turn out and turn up, there’s nothing like it.  In an era where college athletics as we knew and loved it is barely recognizable, the student body assembled en masse to cheer on their fellow students lives on as an irrepressible, indomitable force.  They are the last sentries on the wall of the whole enterprise, preserving it and protecting it.

It was a long first half Thursday night.  Between the four team timeouts, the two replay reviews, the player injury that required a cart and the “regular” ESPN-mandated timeouts, it seemed to go on forever.  Then, at the end of the first half, Rayshawn Pleasant intercepted a pass and ran it back 100 yards, right down our sideline and then right into that teeming mass of wild humanity.  Imagine what that was like for the players involved, and for those students who had been standing for two hours in that end zone and got to see that play. As Coach Sumrall said, you didn’t just hear them; you felt them.

Sure, we all hope more of them will stick around for the second half next week.  You hear coaches across America complain about this second half exodus, because they all know what those students mean to their programs.   Maybe it was a ‘school night,” or maybe they’re just kids with other passionate pursuits.   Like our own kids, we can’t expect them to stay alongside us forever; they grow up and they have their own lives.  But also like our own kids, boy do these students matter.  They make such a meaningful difference to our Tulane family of players, coaches, and every one of us.  Let’s enjoy and cherish them while we have them.

-Tim Scandurro