When Is a Bell Not a Bell?

- The clapper's the easy part. The victories are gonna be tough. -

Cole

It's been that kind of 24 hours.

I walk in the door after 8 hours of travel on Labor Day and find out we don't have any hot water in the house, and haven't for a few days now. Terrific. I call maintenance right away and they don't send anyone until this morning -- half an hour before my alarm is supposed to go off.

"Try the hot water in about half an hour," he says. Great.

So while I'm waiting to take a shower I check to see exactly how badly Tulane lost Friday. It turns out they lost by 24, making me look brilliant (or, more to the point, mercifully not making me look like a blithering idiot). That's embarrassing enough, but then I saw the highlight video.

So the Superdome was mostly empty. Not much I can do about that. But I can (I think) help with that victory bell thing. I knew where that clapper was when I was at Tulane, and I know I can find it now. Stay tuned for some investigative reporting, SSFA! style.

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Green Wave, We Hardly Knew Ye

- Chasing the Tigers in an empty stadium. What else is new? -

Cole

The Tulane Green Wave 2009 football campaign ends tonight around 11:00 pm Eastern, as the Green Wave finish their opening game against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane. An already sparse audience, dwarfed by the massive Louisiana Superdome, and a national television audience provided by ESPN will be on hand to witness the season's conclusion.

It's not just that Tulane is a two-touchdown underdog at home, though that does help. Anyone familiar with Tulane's performance over the past six years or so knows the truth: this is a doomed squad. Look at last year's eight-game losing streak. Look at the myriad of special teams miscues -- blocked punts, missed field goals, touchdowns allowed on kick returns -- that dogged the team all season. Look at the collection of NFL-grade talent that has donned the olive and blue (JP Losman, Mewelde Moore, and Matt Forte as the most prominent examples) since the Green Wave's last bowl game in 2002.

You'd be hard pressed to find the best symbol for Tulane's nearly decade-long stretch of futility. Is it Lester Ricard, the LSU transfer so excited to play against his old squad in Tiger Stadium, who fumbled the first snap from scrimmage when the "rivalry" was renewed in 2007? Is it the 2006 home opener, the first Tulane game in city limits since Hurricane Katrina, where Tulane fell flat early en route to a 33-28 loss to SMU? Maybe it's the 2003 homecoming game against Houston, organized by MTV and featuring OutKast, played in a depressing drizzle at a half-filled Tad Gormley Stadium (capacity: 30,000). Even OutKast was disappointing, as only one of the two members showed up and he played "Hey Ya" twice so the cameras could get a good take.

But maybe the best symbol is former head coach Chris Scelfo. As Cajun as a crawfish pie, Scelfo enjoyed limited success in assistant coaching stops at Georgia and Marshall before his hiring. Named the head coach at the end of Tulane's only undefeated season, Scelfo's record barely scratched the surface of the miserable luck he endured. I'd like to think it was his lovable aw-shucks demeanor and perennial quotability that allowed him to keep his job until the end of the 2006 season; in reality, it may well have been departmental fatalism. Either way, how can you hate a guy that toured the South with a vagabond collection of college football players in 2005, continuing to play and "carry the torch" for a drowned school, record be damned? Or who punted on third down in a game because he couldn't stand watching the offense go backwards any more? Or who said about his offense, "We pissed down our leg for 60 minutes"?

Fairly or not for some who endured what he did, Scelfo was let go after the 2006 season. Even in his final press conference as Tulane head coach, Scelfo kept his sense of humor: asked what was next, he replied, "I'm gonna go home, take a nap, pick the kids up from school..."

But back to the present day. Maybe Tulane will hold their own against Tulsa tonight, and it is physically possible that they could win. But with nowhere near the resources of the LSUs and USCs and Michigans of the world, what's a small-budget program to do to escape from this death spiral of losses and apathy?

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Also Receiving Votes (Other Stories We Missed)

-All right, good job, but I'm not gonna call you 'Esteban'.-

Cole

Six things to keep you occupied while waiting for the live blog to start tomorrow:

The Arizona Republic reports that the idea for "Shaq Vs." was stolen from teammate Steve Nash. Who knew the Big Aristotle was capable of such ... Shaqstabbing?

The Red Sox are getting an integral part of their team back tonight. In the immortal words of Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley, "Thank God."
As @MikeCostelloe put it: "Plaxico Burress gets a new deal! 2 yrs, $0.0 mil, nothing up front but, depending on the showers, plenty in back, with a 2-yr club option."

Jemele Hill -- remember her? She of the "Celtics = Hitler" comparison? -- is back in the news again for suggesting Packer fans give B**** F**** the "Duracell treatment". Nice going there; not like F**** wasn't going to be in full body armor for that game anyway. (And no, before you complain, I did NOT suggest something analogous last week. I specifically said I WASN'T suggesting throwing aluminum beer bottles at Johnny Damon from the Monster Seats.)

Let the record show that Tulane men's basketball team beat Memphis in 2008. Twice. Hey, you root for the Green Wave long enough, you take what you can get. (Can I just say, by the way, that voiding wins is the least effective punishment ever? Hit offenders where they'll actually feel it: their wallets.)

Chad Ochocinco decided to inject some life into the always moribund preseason by kicking an extra point and the ensuing kickoff in last night's game against the Patriots, thereby saving everyone from having to listen to hours upon hours of how well Tom Brady responded to getting hit. And since the final score was 7-6, you could say Ochocinco kicked the game-winning extra point. You won't, because it's the preseason and no one cares, but you could.

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