Something Old, and Something New: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

Walking around a college campus in the summertime can be a spiritual experience.  There is something  breathtaking about being alone in the presence of the venerable old buildings, tree-lined sidewalks, lush landscaping and inviting quads that grace the campuses of many of our nation’s historic universities.  In a few short weeks the empty sidewalks and green expanses will be full of young people and energy, but in the summer, it feels like it all belongs to you. 

Perhaps more accurately, at least during the daytime, it belongs to you and the contractors.  Because there is no university campus I’ve ever stepped foot on in summer that doesn’t have a host of improvements  that the school is desperately trying to complete before classes start.

I walked around our campus in the early evening last Friday night with my wife and older daughter, having arrived an hour early for a performance at Dixon Hall. For as much time as we spend there on fall Saturdays, I hadn’t really walked around and taken in all the newer buildings.   There was McAllister Auditorium where I had graduated, looking pretty much as it always had. But my freshman dorm, Phelps Hall on Willow Street, is long gone and replaced with a new dorm; the legendary dining hall Bruff Commons (routinely called ‘Barf Commons’ by its student patrons in my day) is also gone, replaced by a beautiful and functional modern building.  Everything in this part of campus looks sharper, newer, and definitely cleaner than it was in my day. 

Then we crossed McAllister Drive and got a different kind of surprise.   In case you’re not aware, the university has been engaged in an extensive renovation of the Newcomb and Berger Family Lawn quad areas this summer.  They were both dug up and equipped with subsurface water retention areas to aid with campus flooding and to help the City with its well-documented drainage problems.  Information is available here:  Unified Green initiative to transform uptown campus. 

This area is sacred ground because it’s where most of us tailgate in the fall.   Both quads are fenced off, but the Berger Family Lawn-- formerly known as the LBC Quad, and before that to us oldtimers as the UC Quad—has recently been resodded and looks like it will be ready for tents and barbecue pits and ice chests in September.  The Newcomb quad side and the soon-to-be former street between the two quads have a ways to go, as the official release says the project won’t be fully complete until next spring.  This year while the work is still progressing, and next year when it’s finally done, everything will look a little different.

Change, they say, is inevitable.  And a historic vibrant university is always changing, always trying to hold on to the best parts of its tradition and culture but constantly evolving to stay relevant and avoid stagnating.

Which brings us to our new football coach and our 2026 Green Wave football team.  Gone are a half dozen contributing seniors, along with a dozen-plus major contributors from last year who are off to “greener” pastures.  Things are going to look different within the friendly confines of Yulman Stadium this year too.

The merits of Coach Hall and the culture, depth and quality of the roster have been exhaustively examined by advocates and critics alike this offseason.  I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would add much of value to the offseason conversation, or any fresh ground I could cover that hasn’t already been thoroughly plowed.

But when has that stopped me.

About the only thing I feel sure of in my heart is that nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is more eager for this season to get here than the man who has heard for many months and from many mouths that he’s been a failure in his chosen profession, that he doesn’t deserve this opportunity, that every roster and staff addition he’s made has been a subtraction, and that our program will take a large step backwards. 

Sure, you can say he’s being paid very well, and that he and his wife and children know what they signed up for.  But no man, no competitive man who believes in himself, wants to hear all of that and answer six months of questions about it.  What he wants instead is the opportunity to reshape the narrative.  He did it vicariously last year at Memphis.  He told the team the night before that the awful beating they took the week before at UTSA did not define them, and that he was living proof that you don’t have to be defined by your worst moment, if you learn from it and commit yourself to getting better and dive back into the deep end with energy and focus.  The next night, our team did just that and away we went.

But none of that, or anything else, matters any more.  The talking season is over.  Will Hall will be defined not by what he did as a head coach at USM, not by what he did as a head coach at West Alabama or West Georgia, and certainly not by his work as an assistant coach here.  He will be defined by what he does now, with this opportunity he has in front of him.   

Unlike a certain former Tulane linebacker, he didn’t look for reasons why he couldn’t win here.  He didn’t leave us at the altar to take an assistant’s job with our most hated rival.  Oh, I’ve heard the response—“well he didn’t have any other options.”  He did.  He’s still young, with decades of coaching ahead of him.  He could have done what Blake Baker did at another program, biding his time and building his resume until a sure thing came along.  Because when you get right down to it, he has only one chance to resurrect himself as a head coach at this level.  One.

And we’re it.   Blake Baker flinched, and Will Hall jumped.  He chose to aggressively go after the Tulane job, and to risk it all.   His legacy, his future as a head coach in Division 1, all of it.  He chose to bet on himself, and the young men in our locker room.  And he chose us. I’m so tired of talking about how he GOT here, and so ready to see what he can DO here.

Preseason practice got underway this week.  There are big shoes to fill, and there’s a standard to meet.  Will it work out?  I hope it does and I think it will, but I don’t know, and neither do the optimists or pessimists.  Nobody does.  That, as the old saying goes, is why they play the games. 

For at least one football coach we will all be watching, those games can’t get here soon enough.