Before green-and-white-checkered end zones were painted on the Yulman Stadium turf, Tulane football played in a stadium meant for over 70,000 spectators, the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. For a school with less than 8,000 undergraduate students, the empty seats became a haunting distraction. From the press box to the field, the glaring emptiness was felt throughout the stadium, as air conditioning units blasted louder than crowd noise at times. One traveling reporter once metaphorically associated the empty seats with the lost souls from Hurricane Katrina.
Outsiders viewed Tulane as neither good nor bad, but ugly.
Tulane Athletics has dramatically changed in three years from its final season in the Superdome.