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Tulane Stadium left its mark on New Orleans
And here's the thing: Without Tulane Stadium, there would have been no John Gilliam, at least not with the Saints, no kick return that old men are still jawing about today. There would have been no team, not without the preexisting stadium in which to install it, and college football might have died out in the city years before. There'd have been none of the unique culture that the Saints bred, and the passion the city heaps upon its beloved teams would have been directed elsewhere.
The crackpot in question was Dave Dixon, the father of the Superdome and the man most responsible for bringing the Saints to New Orleans. He'd spent years wrestling with government to get antitrust legislation passed, which ultimately landed him the Saints and paved the way for the NFL-AFL merger.
That game set college football attendance records for a night game and for any game played in the South, drawing 86,598 fans, and when it was all but over, the Tulane faithful are said to have urinated onto retreating LSU fans off of the upper deck.
Look at the documents from the original Tulane Stadium, back when it broke ground, and you'll notice a familiar name: Benson. It's Herbert Benson this time, Tom's great uncle, who was the architect of the original stadium and a president of the Sugar Bowl in the 1930s.
Then, at halftime, performers reenacted the Battle of New Orleans, and the whole thing went awry when a cannon misfired, blowing off one man's hand. That caused the horse carrying the fellow playing Andrew Jackson to bolt and, by proxy, the British to win, rewriting fake history. Then, to add insult to literal injury, the man with the bloody hand was almost run over by one of those very ostriches and the small chariot it pulled.
And here's the thing: Without Tulane Stadium, there would have been no John Gilliam, at least not with the Saints, no kick return that old men are still jawing about today. There would have been no team, not without the preexisting stadium in which to install it, and college football might have died out in the city years before. There'd have been none of the unique culture that the Saints bred, and the passion the city heaps upon its beloved teams would have been directed elsewhere.
The crackpot in question was Dave Dixon, the father of the Superdome and the man most responsible for bringing the Saints to New Orleans. He'd spent years wrestling with government to get antitrust legislation passed, which ultimately landed him the Saints and paved the way for the NFL-AFL merger.
That game set college football attendance records for a night game and for any game played in the South, drawing 86,598 fans, and when it was all but over, the Tulane faithful are said to have urinated onto retreating LSU fans off of the upper deck.
Look at the documents from the original Tulane Stadium, back when it broke ground, and you'll notice a familiar name: Benson. It's Herbert Benson this time, Tom's great uncle, who was the architect of the original stadium and a president of the Sugar Bowl in the 1930s.
Then, at halftime, performers reenacted the Battle of New Orleans, and the whole thing went awry when a cannon misfired, blowing off one man's hand. That caused the horse carrying the fellow playing Andrew Jackson to bolt and, by proxy, the British to win, rewriting fake history. Then, to add insult to literal injury, the man with the bloody hand was almost run over by one of those very ostriches and the small chariot it pulled.
