This is primarily a Tulane football blog, although I do occasionally comment on all matters Tulane that may or may not be any of my business. I love following Tulane Greenwave football, zing-zang Bloody Marys, hostessing cute tailgating parties, and life in New Orleans. It's fabulous. oh and I adore Mr. Hullabaloo.
PS This blog is not affiliated in any way "officially" with Tulane University or Tulane Athletics. It is purely the crazy antics and obsessions of Mr. and Mrs. Hullabaloo who love them some greenwave (I say tee-ay (!) y'all).
Coach Hullabaloo was SO pissed off about the Wake Forest loss. It basically ruined our labor day weekend. Enough that I couldn't bear to write a post, so here I am midnight the night before the UAB game pulling an all nighter.
So for Wake Forest we still managed to look super cute in our matchy Green shorts for the game. Even though it was a loss, on top of being a dreaded weeknight game.
The highlight was Devon’s number 18 got retired in a pregame ceremony. So I pulled out my shirt to help honor my favorite Greenie of all time.
After our unfortunate loss, Coach Hullabaloo tried to calmly rewatch the game later on over the weekend to make sure he wasn’t overreacting. He managed to only get through a quarter of the replay before screaming “CMON!!” and flinging the remote control like a projectile.
Oh well, c’est la vie of a Tulane fan.... The more things change, the more we figure out ways to lose.
Me, I just felt jipped... Playing college football on a weeknight, or any other day except for Saturday, is like celebrating Thanksgiving the week before or something equally out of sorts. And losing like that where we basically gift wrapped the win to Wake in flipping overtime just made the drudgery even worse.
Only Tulane can figure out new and inventive ways of losing a game. Who gets 15 yard penalty in overtime?!?! And omg on the “participation fireworks” afterwards. Which I KNOW they actually weren’t but it was aggravating nonetheless.
I mean like Wake Forest didn’t even trust their kicker to do a field goal and call it a night. They had to prolong our agony and Ram it Up The Middle every inch of those damn 20 yards.
And Christmas on a Cracker! Seriously. We made 3.9 yards a carry the whole game and so third and forever long we dial up a run play.
ARE YOU FER REAL? #DoddmentazumasRevenge
I blame the fact that we don’t get to tailgate properly for weeknight games. I need to go back and calculate our Saturday home tailgates to wins ratio and present my findings to the Tulane Athletics Fan Committee to ensure that we hold a Jazz Funeral for weeknight games.
Tulane trying to play up that were the Nola College Football team. Mayor Cantrell did the coin toss and I love that they’re running out on the field with the flag of the city.
I think we need to tattoo this concept on people’s foreheads. Like the Tulane graduate I talked to at a shop on Magazine Street who replied that if they carried a particular item in a Tulane version they would ohmygoodness need to do it for UNO, Xavier, and Dillard. So it’s just easier for her to carry it in Saints and Corndog only. Excuse me? What The Facundus is wrong with you!? I promptly pivoted and left her store.
Anyways, so we finally got to enjoy our first tailgate for the Nicholls game and thank goodness we won.
We beat Kansas by a degree of separation, woot!
And it’s all due to this guy right here. Corey Dauphine y’all. Yes, indeed.
He is like Thunder and Lighting y’all. He makes me believe!
I’d also like to honorable mention my delicious Crawfish Cornbread (recipe below) and our nuclear jello shots that Coach Hullabaloo made.
Both of which primed everyone up for a victory and set the tone for all the goodness and blessings that followed. Look how cute Shockwave lined up afterwards for the Alma Mater with the football team.
Nicholls Nation showed up in force. A feat which they are so proud of they actually wrote it up in the newspaper down there. Congrats Colonels! We woulda given you a celebratory fireworks show to commend you, but we wasted it on Wake Forest’s victory.
Anyways, of all of the teams which I consider beneath our dignity, I must admit that I esteem Nicholls the most and hope we schedule them again.
The one exception was the one Corndog/Nicholls fan that one time whom Big Mike argued with and got to shut up by telling him he’d pee’d on his truck. Omg ha. Yes, that happened. Speaking of Big Mike, he came by to see us at tailgate and show us his cute sneakers. Yay Big Mike!
Anyways, it was a fun game vs Harvard on the Bayou and I hope we get to invite them again to Yulman.
In the meantime, hope you enjoy the recipe for the cornbread because it’s really legit and worthy of a high five. One W down, 5 more to geaux.
Pinterest Crawfish Cornbread
2 box jiffy cornbread mix (or Bob's Redmill if you roll GF)
1 small onion, chopped
1 small bell pepper, chopped
1 small jalapeno, deseeded & diced
2 cup shredded Tillamook cheddar cheese
1 8-ounce can corn, drained
1 (8-ounce) can cream corn
3 eggs
1 lb crawfish tails, precooked and rough chopped
1/2 stick butter
Sautee the veggies in the butter until translucent and then set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 350.
Whisk your 3 eggs together and then pour over the dry cornbread mix with the drained corn and the cream of corn and mix together.
Add the cheese and crawfish to the cornbread mixture and mix through, and then add the cooled onion mixture.
Grease your baking pan with PAM or with a little butter, and add the cornbread mixture. I sprinkled the top with some chopped green onion for a little “extra”.
Bake for 45 minutes and then I let it cool down in the oven for a little longer to make sure it was cooked through and the top browned.
And all through the house..... Not a creature was stiring, not even a mouse. Or a corndog for that matter since half their roster has transferred ha ha!
Anyways, for real y'all the season may officially begin! My cute Angry Wave Tulane gameday dress is ready to go. Watch for it at the Nicholl's game next week. This dress needs a full day of tailgating, so it won't be wasted on a midweek game.
As you can probably guess from my silence since my last blog post: we did not win the SMU game to close out the season and therefor we did not get to go bowling. Sadness. We didn't even get to go to Russia for the World Cup neither because the US lost to Trinidad. We even kicked a goal for Trinidad in that game just to put an exclamation point on how we were so not going to the World Cup.
It was indeed our winter of discontent.
I can't begin to tell you how wretched it was to see opponent after opponent in their bowl games and us sitting at home with the Saints Vikings playoff game to pour more salt on our bruised and wounded egos.
Full Stop.
Ermagerd, that SMU game was beyond my worst nightmare come true. I can't even watch highlights from that game still. I can't even stomach the promo hype videos that the video department has been putting out because it shows highlights from the SMU game. I just prefer to pretend that that game didn't even happen, it happened to someone else, and it was just a terrible forgotten dream from long long ago.
I mean, we looked all cute and Tulane-y too with our buttons and boots and cute skirt, but it was all for naught.
I cried. Coach Hullabaloo cried. Actual (real) Coaches Wives were crying. And then to make matters worse omg on how the Saints lost to the Vikings, with friggin Case Keenum torturing us YET again!! That man! I am so over him! Sweet baby Jesus on a kingcake, why?!
Speaking of King Cake - guess who got to ride in Rex on Fat Tuesday in the Greenwave Mobile?!
This girl! See, there's even video that made the TV. LOL on our friends saying "No Way!"
Yes way! We have the greatest friends, and I had so much fun! It definitely helped me lick my wounds. And while talking about the VW (who our owner friends have named "Sophie") - Sophie needs some repairs and updates y'all. So here is a call out to all in Greenwave Nation to pitch in a tip so that Sophie can go get fixed up and maintained.
Sophie is owned by super fans who live out of state and they pay for all of her care out of pocket. They created her and do not get any University funding, other than they are granted a parking space in Diboll so that they didn't have to drive her back and forth every football and Mardi Gras season. I know we can be very generous in Greenwave Nation, so please make this girl happy by helping our friend make their goal. Thank you!!
So, what also helped turn my sadness around was beating LSU (again!) in baseball at Turchin last baseball season. Yassss indeed!
We were so pleased.
And you know it's not a victory unless we get to twerk, and twerk I did y'all!
The next day was my final farewell wearing this beloved shirt. I couldn't wait to parade it around our favorite breakfast spot in the morning. Just as a reminder that we ended the rivalry with a win now that the Corndogs refuse to play us in any sport anymore.
Bunch of chickens.....
So other than the big win over the Corndogs, I decided to boycott writing about baseball season last spring, because that was such a major dumpster fire and very unHullabaloo-worthy.
And speaking of Hullabaloo - it's been 4 months since our last Hullabaloo. I can't wait to do the Hullabalooo in Columbus, and in Birmingham, and dare I say: at Homecoming. And tomorrow is THE. DAY!! Our first official gameday of the 2018 season is upon us and goodness knows I am ready.
Turn that frown upside down Greenies! And go light candles at a statue for Saint Sebastian.
If our prayers stay strong: we'll get to celebrate Kwanzaa or Hanukkah in sunny Orlanshreve Bocaport!
Woot!
Sweet baby Jesus on a Kingcake, how sad was our mid season skid? Here we were 3-3 and all full of ourselves that losing is for losers and then WHAM-O! October hit and FIU decides to recruit Juco's we can't recruit, Middlewest Coast Florida Commuter College had its way with us, Memphis takes Sean Wilson's brother away from us, and ChickfilA University gets their only conference win and ruins yet another fabulous annual Tulane Homecoming tailgate.
Like sand thru our fingertips, bowl eligibility was becoming a distant and faint figment of our imagination. I mean, cmon my homecoming dress was so cute (from Red Bubble, link)! Me snagging a picture with Griff at Homecoming.
But Tulane being Tulane will manage to come up with new and fascinating ways to lose homecoming. Ay-yay-yay!
This year we false started ourselves (!!!) at the 14 yard line and then added a cherry on top by missing a routine field goal. Ahhhhhhh!
Vegas even had us favored in the Cincy game! And we STILL couldn't get it together. We legit missed the field goal by more than the actual distance of the field goal. The goal post was like 30 yards, and the kick sailed like 40 yards left almost whirling around and landing over in the Press Box.
I exaggerate, but Quelle disappointment!
Coach Hullabaloo and I went and drown our sorrows at the new shake place in Riverbend called Shake Therapy. We both put on 20 lbs with our shakes.
These shakes are out the box, no?
Anyways, the following week for ECU game Coach Hullabaloo went on a bromance honeymoon weekend with his Marine Corps buddies, and so I listened to the game on the radio app. I swear I turned the game off like 3 times in complete aggravation. Pushing the off/stop button forcefully and shoving my phone away, like I AM SO SO SO DONE WITH YOU TULANE!!!!
But then Our Divine Lady of Goal Line Stands totally came thru in Overtime! What!! I was never more relieved to get this text.
So my "drown my sorrows" drive thru Atomic Burger and milkshake turned into a celebratory feast listening to the post game interviews and lol-ing at the meltdown on the pirates twitters and online fan forums.
Glorious!
So last week being our final tailgating of the season with my favorite Greenie Gals, I decided that whatever will be, will be. I secretly hoped for a miracle win to extend our season, but resigned myself to our season ending early and just enjoying our final invitation to party in the suite.
But it turned out to be the best football weekend ever!
We got to share the suite experience with some of our favorite Greenies, including Mr Campus Connection. Everyone go shop there for black friday! The whole store is 25% off. Shop at Campus Connection
I was nervous about wearing this lucky gameday dress and giving it loss juju. I wore this one for the game where we got bowl eligible our Bowl Wave season. But lucky dress totally came thru! Hallelu!
Twerk!
Did you know Coach Scelfo is Houston's O-line coach? lol. omg Coach Scelfo can't even beat Tulane, what. Also, Major Applewhite is from Bataan Rouge which made this win extra delicious!
And how about Terren Encalade?! Westbank, holla!
Anyways, when we held Houston with minutes left, forced them to punt and then made the first down to where we could kneel it out, I am TELLING YOU I was STILL a nervous wreck and prayed prayed prayed during the kneeling. Please lord, don't fumble the kneel. Please lord, not a penalty. Please lord, let this be true!
In hindsight, I should have known things would be alright when I ran into Coach Pierce in Glazer Club. Coach Winner McWinnerville himself, yes!!! I was so excited to see him and chat. I neglected to have my phone on me to capture the moment for posterity, but at halftime his wonderful wife came to find me and we had us a gab fest!
I just LOVED catching up with her and wishing them a fun vacay weekend in Nola. I told them how much we miss them and his staff and their families. Oh but if only we could find a pot of gold to pay Texas-sized salaries. Sigh.
Anyways, it was awesome that they still hold us fondly in their hearts. And that they came to support Coach Fritz even tho Coach Pierce is himself a UH cougar.
We were so lucky to have them while we could. I mean he knows first hand the crap UH likes to pull to try and win games out from under us.
This past game UH brought their whole band, and they proceeded to play loudly over our offense! lol Parker Waters capturing this moment:
Par example - during Coach Pierce's last season when we needed to beat them to move to the #1 seed in conference, they stopped the baseball game for inclement weather, shoved all of the Tulane team and Greenwave fans into a gym, making us ask for permission to use the bathrooms, and meanwhile the UH baseball team did batting practice between rain squalls.
Chutzpah.
Well, this time we got to take one for the good guys!
And I just loved this lady whoever she is.
I'm a big fan!
And then to cap off the weekend - as if it couldn't get any better - Coach Hullabaloo and I went to the Saints vs Redskins game at the dome with our favorite Shockwave and her mom who are Redskins fans.
What. a. game that was! I was equally happy that Ryan Grant had that monster touchdown for the Redskins. I had not had that much fun watching a comeback win since our Superbowl season.
When we started the drive that tied the game I actually had to go to the little girls room! Coach Hullabaloo wanted to kill me! And when Alvin Kamara bobbled the catch into the endzone the entire dome actually SHOOK and I almost got knocked off the pot by the reverberation. I am serious!
Anyways the NFL Boycott has been such a blessing for us. I hope the idiots who burned their tickets and what not continue to stay away and keep their juju away from our team. We haven't lost since! Hurray for the boycott!!
And meanwhile in Greenwave Nation everyone is trying to plan to sneak away to Dallas to cheer our Greenies on to our 6th W that we desperately need to get a bowl. Coach Hullabaloo are already in Dallas with our Tulane gameday boots packed and ready to go. We are currently enjoying getting pampered by my parents and sleeping soundly with bowl dreams, resting up for the final stretch.
If you can't come, please: rally your rally cap at home, do not wear charcoal colored clothes, light a candle to Saint Sebastian, and do not wear purple drawers or something equally bad.
We can't wait for Saturday and to report back on how things go either way. Cross your fingers Greenies!
Coach Hullabaloo and I had fitful sleep last night processing how much this game sucked and how awful it is as a Tulane fan to be here in this space again. There are not enough chicken empanadas or shrimp mofongo in the world to mitigate our disappointment.
This is us smiling and excited before the game, completely naive about the slaughterhouse we were being led to.
Coach Hullabaloo said he was screaming at players all night in his sleep. A veritable "Pesadilla" of a night in Southwest Miami (i.e. La Souwesera).
After the game, we drove out to Dolphin's stadium up to a drive-in Sonic, and had us some milkshakes chock full of everything bad for us and cried in our milkshakes.
That game! Completely wretched. Unacceptable. Unforgiveable. Unseemly. Unfortunate. Unworthy. Unbefitting.......Just all of the opposites of "Magnificent".
We just can't win at a directional school in Florida. Or on the Road. Or when favored by Vegas. or after two wins in a row. College Gameday complimented us on our white travel unis on national television, and then just look at what we did with that honor!
Giving credit where credit is due: FIU took UNC's really dumb decision to discard a truly great coach in Butch Davis and is letting Coach Davis rehabilitate his career at their expense. And it makes them look great in the meantime. Kudos to FIU. More on them in a bit.
By the way, about Coach Hullabaloo: We had to explain this weekend that he is not, in fact, an actual Coach. And this time to actual players families lol! So a PSA reminder: Us calling him "Coach" was a joke among our tailgating friends from when Toledo was denied budget to hire a real Special Teams coach, and surprise (!) our Special Teams sucked. So we proclaimed my husband our special teams "coach" at Toledo's last UCF game in Orlando (which we lost. See, a game in Florida). Coach Hullabaloo just happened to be excited to have sideline passes that game so he bought one of the same golf shirts and visors that the other coaches wore, and that's how Coach Hullabaloo was "born".
I can't begin to tell you how many people I've had to correct. Even actual Tulane University personnel.
Anyways, Coach Davis - as top notch coaches will do - had his staff break down our film and prepared his team for us as their next opponent: which was to throw the ball on us, and also to just jump over through our tackles.
I was mildly frustrated with these issues for our loss against Navy, and couldn't understand fans who were upset that we lost against Navy - saying that was a game we should have won. I can say I never thought that, I thought we played poorly. But then we caught OU asleep that first quarter, and we had just demolished an FCS team, and then we miraculously got past Army, and Tulsa laid an egg. And of course everyone got swept up in the wonderfulness that was now Greenwave Nation, and we forgot that we have these nagging issues that someone was waiting to pounce on, and well, congrats FIU and Coach Butch Davis for pouncing on them.
During our high, I was able to convince Coach Hullabaloo that it was safe to start traveling to away games again and so we threw caution to the wind and booked this trip to Miami. I had even started buttering him up for a trip to Memphis, which is now most definitely off the schedule for us.
Granted I am most probably the most worthless play by play analyst ever, so take my thoughts on this however you please. Coach Hullabaloo bought me the book "Take Your Eye Off The Ball" for Christmas one year and I got through about two chapters before I fell asleep, or gave up, or decided that twittering my opinions about football and politics was more fun.
Bottom line, we played like crap. We had a tiny sliver of glimmer when we noticed this hurry up placard on the sideline.
Coach Hullabaloo didn't bring his glasses and he said, look: a witch riding a banana. I fell out laughing. Our Lady of Witch Riding A Banana.
During those few plays we were actually doing something, and then Banks fumbled the ball and that was pretty much that. Stick a fork in us.
Coach Hullabaloo was screaming when we started running out of innings, everything from that our QB and probably the team must have violated curfew and gone out last night, and a few other things. I don't think it was that nefarious, I'm giving the team the benefit of the doubt. But what I do want answers on is: Why did we come out after the half without any adjustments? Will we ever have a passing game that doesn't result in a sack, a fumble, or an interception? Why did we need to stick with Banks until the bitter bitter end? Did we tell the guys to keep tackling low? Will we get to see Witch Riding The Banana again?
One play that is forever ingrained in my PTSD Tulane memory that was just outright embarrassing was at Southern Miss in Hattiesburg one year during the Toledo era. That game was so awful that Andre Anderson beat his head against the lockers so loud that you could hear him screaming during the post game show. It was traumatizing. So the play that stuck with me there was a pass to the endzone, our wide receiver was in front of the corner covering him. As our WR jumped up for the ball, the corner stood behind him and just pulled his arms right down. And then caught the pass for an interception. It was just so completely ridiculous, and stupid easy, and something that looked like it could have happened on a playground. We were so in over our heads.
Well, now the same sort of stupid naive thing happened to us last night on one of Bank's interception plays. Our wideout ran a sideline route, Banks was signaling to him, even I could see that's where the throw was going, so the corner just pushed our wideout out of bounds. Just like that. No respect given.
After showing up at OU, I thought we were stepping forward. But last night we just wilted. Even with the return of the twister mat.
Anyways, I'm done talking x's and o's on that. May we never ever see that again. I want a jazz funeral for shitty embarrassing losses.
(I asked Coach Hullabaloo if he thought it was ok for me to say shitty loss on the internet, and he said he characterized it as such. So there. It's out there).
So saving the best for last - the things that made me glad I went to this heaven forsaken game in La Souwesera of Miami. Souwesera is the Cubanification of the words Southwest Area by the way.
Visiting FIU's campus. I actually enjoy scouting out opponent campuses. I love college life, and I love seeing how it is done across our great country. Even though the Sweetwater area of Miami where FIU is located has all of the charm of Airline Highway, they are actively pouring a ton of capital into the campus and the new buildings coming up are actually quite impressive.
I just LOVED this new dorm row area that routes right into the stadium. They paved the streets with panther paw prints, look how cute!
The rest of campus reminds me of UNO. Suburban, a little barren and impersonal. But I give FIU a B for effort on uping the ante.
FIU's stadium was actually a soccer stadium and then they did some improvements to accommodate boosters with chairbacks and some suites up top. All of the metal was covered on the outside with full color printed tarp. It's not actually solid. Riccardo Silva Stadium totally reminded me very much of my days of yore growing up going to Friday Night Lights games at Plano Senior High in Texas.
Their hype video was off. the. chain. It was Miami vice-ish, with shots of the team on the beach, shots of yachts in Miami's harbor. Nevermind that FIU is in the middle of the ghetto, but it says "We aren't pushovers, We are rebuilding"
Of course, I love Tulane's Yulman hype video. It gives me chills and makes me want to cry, it captures the essence of our city, with the music and our sentimental love of our band. But I really liked the scrappy toughness of FIUs video also and that it ends with a heart over Miami on the outline of the state shape of Florida.
I also really loved the DJ in the stands at FIU - for some reason they had him by himself in the endzone and not directly in the student section. But he kept the students and young people jamming, got their small crowd of fans stomping on the metal bleachers for third downs and such. And his intro for the game was actually really cute showing a couple of co-eds bouncing.
It was very Miami. Coach Hullabaloo would be scandalized if we did that at Tulane, as would the neighbors on Audubon Street. They'd grasp their pearls, and probably draft another IZD to outlaw bouncing and twerking at Yulman Stadium if that got put on our jumbotron.
I introduced Coach Hullabaloo to Big Fredia last year at Jazz Fest last year and he was completely speechless.
Anyways, FIU had a traditional straightlaced college band too, and a sizable dance team, pom and flag corps that were talented and kept us entertained.
Miami has no shortage of attractive people who like to perform. Their dance team was like a flock of J Lo's. They are called the "FIU Dazzlers"
I loved that they spotlighted a "Dazzler" for each game, and introduced her and her accomplishments at the university. That was very cute. We have such dedicated students who cheer and perform on gamedays at Tulane and I would love for us to incorporate a similar tradition.
I was disappointed that Riptide did not make the away game, and that our cheerleaders who traveled didn't bring any signage or cheers to lead us in "Green!" "Wave!" cheers when going for first downs and help do our part as fans to generate momentum. In continuing the theme of things going sideways for us, the TU alumni representative stood up to lead half of our fans in the Hullabaloo before the extra point. Facepalm.
I did really love this family's shirts for their Greenie by the way.
There are two very very basic rules of Tulane fandom that you expect someone at the University to review and impress upon our Greenwave Nation. The Hullabaloo goes AFTER the extra point, and we cheer our team when the team needs some mo'. We did these things at Oklahoma, so somewhere along the way in the last three home games we forgot how to do this for away games.
The food available in the concessions areas at FIU were your traditional hot dogs and such, but then they also had some latin touches like Empanadas, and cheese stuffed Arepas (although these are more rubbery chewy than the firmer fancier ones you can find at Maïs on Carondelet).
Speaking of food - Coach Hullabaloo and I ate our way through Miami. So we made the decision to just make a cameo at the Tulane Alumni tailgating and save valuable stomach room and our pocketbook for other things.
The tents for the Alumni tailgate were put in the path of the sun and tromping around on the gravel wasn't ideal. But they brought our TU brass band which was nice, and the koozies they were giving out were cute.
We got to catch up with the owner of Bruno's and say hello to a few other friendly faces.
Then we made our way over to the most wonderful Tulane football family we have met so far....
This Greenwave football family we met are Miami locals and they had all of the cuban deliciousness that you would expect at a Miami tailgate. Lechon, sanduches cubanos, plantain chips, sangria. And a folding table for a game of dominoes. And raggaeton on the car speakers. It was off the chain.
I had such an amazing time getting to meet and chat the way that Latin families do. They shared with us a whole other list of "locals" eateries to try on future trips, yummo. I also got a lesson on how to cut T-shirt with a cute open back which I am planning for my next idea for a gameday dress.
Honestly, if I can say that one positive thing about yesterdays game was getting to meet this beautiful family. This reminded me why Coach and I do what we do. Friends think we are totally loco for being Tulane fans, but then we would have never met these lovely people.
Look how precious their little super fan....
And look how cute their face placards of their son were too.
They held them up in the stands during the game, I loved it.
I am so ready to put losing behind us, and get some answers. Get some rest y'all, the rest of the season is an uphill battle.
