Firsties, The Doberge Conspiracy in Reverse TM. I'm trade marking that term y'all, for real.
I know y'all were clamoring about my Rice Update earlier and I apologize. But I was unavoidably detained by gossipping duties. And Y'all: Shizzle. Was. Hitting. The. Fan. In the Greenie Dat Nation this weekend.
ALL kinda ways....
So it kinda all started going downhill for me when Wilson Van Hooser's TD was called back for a penalty. Oy! How many of those must we endure? Robert Kelly's TD taken away at Utep. Xavier Rush's TD taken away at Syracuse. That incomplete pass taken away for the Syracuse game...and then this final indignity! Especially when they were holding ALL DAY and we were the ones getting stuck with penalties. How does that work exactly? That's what I wanna know.
These photos have nothing to do with anything other than I took them at the game and I enjoyed them. So I am sharing.
(and then I just have to mention.....did y'all notice how those hurricane-force winds would die down just in the knick of time whenever the Rice kicker would boot the ball for field goals? !!!!! Dear Sweet Baby Jesus, What did we do wrong? Please let me know when our Karmic Debts have been paid in full!)
Ok, so then we are wrapping up to head home, we are sitting on the bus completely unaware of the impending fracas which would be The Flight Home. Football Operations peeps come on the bus and announce that our usual Modus Operandi* of getting off the bus on the tarmac and whisked away onto the plane unencumbered isn't happening because for some reason the Southwest Charter is making us actually go in to the Houston Hobby Airport, go through regular security and then meet up at the gate. All 100 of us or whatever. Yeah. That went sideways.
*Look at me acting like a professional here. I've done exactly 3 trips with the Team, and I am totally inflating this for my ego. ha!
....Yes, I have to point out here that the Rice Marching Owl Band are weird. In addition to these "tongues" hanging out of their tubas, they also zip lined this mannequin into their half time performance from the stands. It promptly broke in two upon impact from smash landing onto the turf...... I didn't get it. But, I digress....
Ok, so a friend of ours whom I'll call Matlock immediately starts freaking out and unpacking his laptop case, combing through each and every pocket because, he, like the rest of us tossed his luggage underneath the bus. Which means that his car keys now may or may not be held hostage with the other luggage underneath the bus and now he won't be able to just take his bags and get in his car at the New Orleans airport when arriving at the other side. This is because the luggage would immediately get put onto the buses and only unloaded out at Wilson Center. Prior to this his cell phone fell and black-screened completely. So that was a downer also.
So then we get to the general people Kiss and Fly departure curb at the airport, every man for himself ambles off the buses. There's no escort from Southwest waiting or nothing so it is like hearding cats trying to figure out where to go. This way, no that way. Up these escalators, down the other escalators. Down one hallway, Oops, turn around to backtrack. Oy. Then finally. Make it to Security.
Ok, well the players normally get gatorade or whatnot before getting on the plane with their boxed dinner. So now Security is all kinds of up in arms because everyone's got liquid. And toothpaste in their backpack. Cause don't you know Al Qaida has chosen to infiltrate the Tulane Football team (the weakest point in our national security system) in order to stage a terrorist plot. So what was supposed to be a 7:15 take off, now is approaching 8pm. I was dying.
So we get to Nola and Matlock has decided that his keys are most definitely lost so his car now definitively needed to spend the night at Moisant. Coach and Mrs. Hullabaloo were happy to bail him out on a ride home. Except that -again- the plane gets to Nola and there's no instructions so everyone starts filing out on the jetway into the Terminal and we're told to go back. So everyone files back onto the jetway where we stand, trapped, for another 20 minutes-half hour until someone else can give us instructions on what was happening.
In the interim, we're getting conflicting reports about exiting the terminal vs. going back towards the exit stairs to the tarmac. Back and forth we shuffle. In the midst of it, a staff member who was behind Coach Hullabaloo was chatting, not paying attention that the line of people had stopped and she bumps into him - but has her hand cupped about to get something out of her bag or something and so she GRABS my husband's ass instead.
OMG, we railed on her! We were so slap happy from the craziness of the trip, that Coach Hullabaloo starts joking with her about grabbing his butt, so then I embarass her further by going ghetto and telling her to get her paws off my man. There was about to be a cat fight. up. in. here! Players were making a circle around us - like I would really claw at her or something. Hello, I'm a Newcomb girl, really. I have a modicum of upbringing. It was so funny though.
Earlier in The Flight Home we told Matlock that these things happen in 3's and so hopefully 1. losing the game 2. his cell phone committing suicide and 3. losing his keys WERE IT and nothing worse would happen.
Well, no, it wasn't.
Up until Saturday, we had a lock on Coach Rod. So we thought. At first, when a Mountaineer Fan mentioned to me over the summer that Rich Rod would most likely be Tulane's next head coach, I thought he was nuts. But then I got a text at the UH game from a friend that I'll call SchmAl. SchmAl apparently heard from a former Greenie Dat coach that RichRod - who was up in the suites during the game - was accepting our offer. Yay, much jubilation in the Greenie Dat Nation ensued. It was a happy two weeks while contract details were being fined tuned and Tammy and the Mackel Twins remained in the dark not having a clue.
When we finally got home Saturday after Rice I start seeing some twittering that Arizona was now in the mix. WTH. So then it's a fierce gossip tree to try to sort this out all day Sunday. Sunday night we are confident that the Arizona thing was just a false rumor, everything is fine - Coach Rod was coming and an announcement was being planned for Tuesday. A friend whom I'll call Mayor has a son who went to AU. Mayor's son has another friend currently still in Tucson who works in a capacity close to the Wildcat athletics - he was told by the AU AD on Sunday that Rod accepted our offer and was headed to Nola for the Tuesday presser.
Well, how dumb were we not to see this one coming from the perennially-fickle Rich Rod: Arizona uped the ante, Rod accepted and their AD flew to Michigan before he could change his mind. Again.
The Doberge Conspiracy in Reverse.*
*for those not familiar with this famous story. In 1998 Coach Rod was lead to believe by Scott Cowen and Sandy Barbour up until the night before the press conference that the job was his. Except that overnight Sam Scelfo of Gambinos Bakeries talked Scott Cowen into hiring his brother Chris, a lowly OL coach at the time, instead. Voila The Doberge Conspiracy. At 6 am, Coach Rod shows up to the Wilson Center wearing a green jacket (where does one find a green jacket I ask?) and tie - only to read in the Times Picayune that Scelfo was being announced. He was literally left at the altar and humiliated.
So Coach Rod waited 13 years to stick it to Cowen, except that I am really pissed about this because in his quest for revenge and glory he stepped all over some very important members of the Greenie Dat Nation. And that would be the members of the 1998 Team whom I love dearly and who went full court press in rushing Rod to be our Coaching Messiah. Even going so far to coordinate sneaking Coach Rod via kitchen back doors and service elevators to elude the Mackel Twins attempt at trying to land their first story. Now Arizona fans are left scratching their heads wondering how the heck they got stuck with this choice and we are left emotionally bruised.
My final words on this and I'm over it. Coach Rod was tailor made for a comeback via CUSA and Tulane. He has the #1 recruiting ground at his disposal, a spread offense conference that would be a cinch to dominate, an easy schedule, and an adoring fan base that would have given him an enormous homecoming and an even lengthier honeymoon period.
But really, y'all I feel that whatever is supposed to happen is gonna happen and I have faith. I'm over him.
Really I am. Besides, how cute is this picture?
(a little league in Houston named themselves the Tulane Greenwave and they have a cheerleader. And they came to the game, it was cute.)
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