Yahweh, Take The Wheel

A fellow Greenie, whom I'll call Perry Mason, has been pestering me about updating Hullabaloo Huddle.

In all honesty, I'd been waiting until I was in a less bitter and patronizing mood to pen something. So I wouldn't sound, well so patronizing and bitter. I'd actually written a few versions of my Nola Bowl recap, but deleted them.

Parker Waters Photography
I've also kinda shut my trap a bit because it's the homestretch in recruiting. Signing Day is Wednesday. And it's a tenuous situation with Temple and Kansas State for the love of Yahweh upsetting the apple cart up in here. I'm holding out hope that CJ pulls a pelican out of his ear and delivers us some serious linemen.

But I am a Tulane fan after all, and ya knows we have our fair share of absurd to plow through if not today, tomorrow. And if not this, week, well TPTB will get around to derailing something next week in an effort to give us something else to roll our eyes about and call for TPTB to resign/be fired/wear a tie/go across the street. And yet, TPTB gets right back to keep on keepin on.

marymouton
So at long last y'all, my two cents about our cameo at the Nola Bowl: Losing to USL was such a bitter pill to swallow. Wretched.

rslipman
I was simply stunned and totes embarrassed. And to all those Moral Victors out there all aglow: I salute you for your fortitude. Because I am a much, much, weaker individual and I am not worthy of your esteem.

I'm not a completely awful, hateful person though. I was relieved that we didn't just roll over and give up.

I have no hard feelings towards any member of the team. Defense kept us in the game and has been so unbelievably fun to watch all season.

But why oh why did we deviate from the running game at the bowl game?

photos by Chris Granger, Times Pic
Hello, this plan was working just fine... If we were insisting on putting Montana back in there after what happened at FAU and UTSA - why oh why were the instructions to pump fake and then throw to the other team? Handing it to Darkwa was just fine.

So alas, after a month of getting over it I was finally thawing out from my painful memories of December 21 to write something that didn't sound deranged.

But just as I feeling up to the task of sharing my thoughts as a civil person and post cute pictures of all our events, Something Happened. I was fixin to have ample couch surfing time and nesting opportunities around Chateau Hullabaloo and everything due to Sneauxmageddon2014. I had even done p-r-o-m-i-s-e-d Perry he would see a new post. And then wouldn't you know... BAM! this unfortunate Georgia Tech scandal up and hit the fan and I got all wrapped up in following that drama.

TPTB was done raked over the coals from all corners of the Greenie Dat Nation, and not just by the so called "lunatic fringe" this time.

Thanks for finally waking up y'all! TPTB is so used to tuning out our usual vitriol over scheduling lame teams like Southernmost Alabama and Jacksonwherever State, that I bet you one zillion latkes that they didn't give a second thought about cancelling the only interesting OOC series we've had going in at least a decade and with a school who wants to come to New Orleans. TPTB always think small time.

and I had to giggle that Consiglieri Yvette Jones was trotted out again to smooth out their foul up and spin like a washing machine that all is just going smoothly and according to plan, nothing to see so move along (and by the way, the stadium will only have 20,000 seats).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh why, oh, why is it Tulane's karmic fate to only make the national news when either tragedy befalls us or we deliberately wish to look like fools (see our Black Tuesday implosion, see the Big East Meltdown, etc., etc. etc.). If we could only collectively will competency upon those who lead our beloved Olive and Blue.

The only thing missing from the walkback explanation has been the perfunctory reference to Katrina. Because ya know. Oh, Ryan Grant's equipment didn't arrive on time to the Senior Bowl? well you know Katrina .... We hired Bob Toledo and extended him, well you know Katrina made us do it .... We hired a basketball coach with a questionable win record, well you know that pesky Katrina has just been up to no good!

It's just not a proper press opportunity in TU-Land if Katrina is not defamed.

I mean fer real! TPTB just announced that they be hiring a "Person to Blame In Chief" - what I'm calling the new position anyways. It's actually supposed to be a COO, but you already know how that's gonna roll. They will hire some naive/young/inexpensive person who is under the impression that we know what we are doing and then she or he will get knocked in the head with a sack of quarters when they realize what's really up and then get blamed for everything that ever went sideways. Be that as it may, the paper carried an interview about this sudden shift in management strategy over there on Ben Weiner about hiring another worker bee, and wouldn't you know it - just when Katrina thought she was finally in the clear, Wham-O, she gets disparaged yet again (read the final sentence of the article. omg, just kill me now).

What I fall back on during disappointing times, what usually offers me refuge from sad thoughts, is to throw myself into gameday tablescaping, shopping and future menu planning. and believe you me I have been setting my Pinterest on fiya. (I have lots of suuuuper cuuute ideas for our opening Yulfogelmevlin tailgating. Which I plan to defiantly unroll even if I end up doing it in my own driveway on the westbank if the official Tulane tailgating goes sideways. Which, sigh, is sadly such a possibility.)

So on that note .... back to my chronicling of our first bowl game in a Decade. You all know how I felt about the New Orleans Bowl going into it. And the requisite activities surrounding the bowl were seriously stressing me out to plan between the holidays and the weather, and not really having my heart in it. But in the end I couldn't let an opportunity to tablescape pass on by, and I couldn't not have the perfect outfits lined up. Or design this cute logo which I created to inspire me to soldier on.

I was the Martha Stewart of Bowl Games y'all and spent the weeks leading up to it making hospitality bags for our out of town wave mommas and working with my Krewe of Hullabaloo-ettes in making super cute second line parasols.

We even made this cute parasol for Coach CJ's wife Angel!

In the end I very much enjoy spending time with all of my peeps, so that was worth the effort and the pain of losing to USL. It is my hope that we don't have to wait another 10 years to be kidnapped by the Athletic Department for a three hour bus ride though. (a three hour bus ride...a three hour bus ride....)

Everybody else called that bus outing "The Bowl Stroll", but we were calling it "the Night We Were Kidnapped by the Athletic Department."

Thursday before the game, we were packed up onto those touristy double decker buses you see around town, but with insufficient information about what exactly was going to happen. It turned into a 5 mile (not really, but it was long) second line march practically to Chalmette and back - and I was in wedge heels. They were cute though and matched my new tweed blazer perfectly, don't you think?

Needless to say, by the conclusion of our forced march I was walking barefoot through downtown (yes, disgusting).

Coach Hullabaloo and Booty were lubricated and so we were just howling with laughter at our predicament. The grand finale was supposed to be a "pep rally" with the football team at the hotel, but someone didn't distribute the memo so we ended up doing a 100th round of the fight song and the Hullabaloo to the valet parking attendants in front of the Hilton Riverside. Mercifully, an hour later after further wandering the streets of New Orleans on what seemed to be a hijacked bus, we were finally deposited back at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood where our saga began.

So the following day, Coach Hullabaloo and I went to the "official" Bowl Luncheon which was at the Marriott.

We got to sit with Devin Boutte's adorable family and learned that they took Nick Montana for his first hunting experience down there in New Iberia.

and Steve Gleason gave a nice speech. Here he is with our players. Love that they got to meet him.

Anyways, nothing else was much interesting really to report about the Bowl Luncheon other than my jaw dropped when I walked into the Marriott. The weeks leading up to the game, it was impossible to find out what the full details were going to be for the bowl game activities as far as Tulane's participation. It was aggravating. The buses which we were taken on the night before had one sad little banner strapped to a corner of it.

By contrast the Marriott, where USL was staying, was completely festooned with USL swag. The doors, the ceilings, posters, stands, garland, gobos - everywhere you turned. When we did our flash mob to the Hilton parking attendants the night before, there was not one stitch of Tulane anywhere at our team hotel. I even asked a client of mine who is in group sales at the Hilton about it and she went on and on about Alabama's swag there for the Sugar Bowl and didn't have a response about our decision to remain anonymous. So the lack of proper swag was very un-Hullabaloo Huddle worthy in my humble opinion.

Anyways, I tried to make up for it as I usually do. On gameday we organized a fab brunch for our booster club and friends that was so cute I couldn't stand it. Tulane Alumni Association hosted something themselves, but I still just looved how ours turned out. Look how cute.

I challenged myself to not spend any more of Coach Hullabaloo's fortune given that it was the holidays and I had already purchased multiple outfits and shoes and kept having to revise outfits due to the changing crazy weather.

So, except for ordering the cake and the balloon bouquets, everything pictured were repurposed items or came from my existing stash. Even the coasters I gave out as favors were liberated from the bowl luncheon the day before.

In all, I have to admit that I enjoyed the chance to stretch out the football season a bit. Coach Hullabaloo was delighted that I didn't wig out like that crazy Alabama fan who tried to beat up on those OU college kids at the Sugar Bowl, so that was a plus. And the game was almost a thrilling comeback.

So in an effort to put it all behind me, I'm already pinteresting menus and such for our games at Yulfogelmevlin next fall. And I'm holding out hope that we have a miracle coup on the recruiting front. (please, please, please, please!)

See you at Signing Day and Cheers to an improved 2014!