![]() ![]() The Big East was known for being a solid basketball conference based in the northeast that occasionally played exciting football. The product, or even the essential brand doesn't matter. Tulane to the Big East was just the logical extension of the cold, craven expansion strategy used by the Big Ten when gobbling up Rutgers and Maryland. Actual attendance for Tulane vs SMU was less than 4,000 people, so a very good Ohio high school team could outdraw them. The Superdome got so quiet that I could hear the marching band fart. I went to a few Tulane games when I lived there, and not only would the Green Wave faithful be outnumbered by Southern Miss fans who made the short drive down, they were outnumbered by *BYU* fans. Anybody who has ever spent more than week in New Orleans will tell you that the Saints come first, the LSU Tigers second, generic SEC football third, the Hornets 4th, and getting drunk 5th. Tulane may be the city's one D1 school, but it's the small, private school for out of town kids, not residents of the 504. Worse than that though, nobody in New Orleans really cares. Even their baseball team, probably the school's flagship program, has struggled in recent years. Their basketball team hasn't made the Big Dance since 1995, and this year, lost to Big Ten bottom feeder Nebraska. The Green Wave have appeared in exactly two bowl games in my lifetime (I was born in 1987), with the most recent being their Liberty Bowl victory in 1998. You've probably seen the stats on Twitter. You know what isn't one of them though? Tulane Athletics. They are also apparently making an effort to upgrade their athletic facilities, as they're in progress of moving out of the cavernous Superdome and into a handsome-looking on-campus stadium of 30,000. It's an excellent school academically, has a beautiful campus, and is located in one of the most interesting cities in America, good ol' New Orleans. My drivers license still lists my old Broadway St address, mere blocks away from campus. I'll preface this by saying I like Tulane. In realignment news that flew a little more under the radar, Division 1 now has their first For-Profit institution, as Grand Canyon University will be joining what's left of the WAC in 2014.ĭick Morris thinks these moves smack of craven desperation. ![]() In case you missed it, East Carolina is finally heading to the Big East in football, and Tulane is joining the league in all sports, no doubt to spearhead the new Big East South division. We already knew that conference realignment had far more to do with securing TV markets than preserving regional and historical rivalries or putting out a palatable product on Saturday afternoons, but the entire process might have jumped the shark in the past 24 hours. ![]()
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