<p>What I do know is that Tulane is building a new football stadium on campus, with the intent of leaving the Superdome. Only, is there a reason why Tulane wanted to leave the Superdome? Lease issues? Safety issues? Excess capacity? Some other issue I'm not aware of?</p>
<p>I am sure there are several reasons. A few are:</p>
<p>The Superdome was just too large a facility for Tulane. Even if they could start to attract 20,000 or more (and they were not close to that lately), the Superdome holds over 80,000. I suspect it was not a profitable arrangement, but I don’t know the terms of their rental.</p>
<p>Having an off campus stadium for a school like Tulane, even if it were playing much better football, would never provide the kind of football experience an on-campus stadium will. Maybe for a really large state school that competes for national championships this kind of arrangement would make sense, but it was never a very good one for Tulane.</p>
<p>Just to give you some examples, in 1998 Tulane was undefeated. Even with a team like that, ticket sales for their home games was reported to be between 19,000-37,000 with an average of about 25,000. And as the Hullabaloo revealed in a story last fall <a href=“thehullabaloo.com”>thehullabaloo.com, the actual number of fans showing up was usually about 10,000-15,000 less than that, at least for the last 5 or so years. Maybe there were fewer no-shows back then, but there would still have been thousands.</p>
<p>Tulane will also generate revenue it can keep from this stadium, whereas parking, concessions, etc. are either lost or shared in their current arrangement. Plus they can rent out the stadium for other events, although they are somewhat limited in scope for this because of an agreement with the city in deference to the residential area.</p>
<p>On-campus (if feasible) is just better. </p>
<p>I can’t think of a school with an off-campus football stadium that wouldn’t rather have its own stadium – Minnesota, Baylor, Tulane, UNLV, Colorado State, Pitt, USF, San Diego State. </p>
<p>USC basically bought the Coliseum from the City of Los Angeles so it could have something pretty close to its own almost on campus stadium. UCLA tried to get a stadium years ago but got nimby-ied (like Tulane almost did). They’ve been bouncing between the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl (25 miles from campus) for decades.</p>
<p>Also Univ of Miami. </p>
<p>Sharing an NFL stadium doesn’t usually work so good for the college teams – Miami, Tulane, Minn, Pitt, SDSU, Temple.</p>
<p>All of what fc said is true, tbh.</p>
<p>I’d also like to point out that the old Tulane Stadium had a very valued history in NOLA and hosted New Orleans’s first three Super Bowls. It’s about time Tulane gets its own stadium again.</p>
<p>Thanks smchls, although I don’t think there will be any Super Bowls in the new stadium, lol.</p>
<p>But that did remind me of another very good benefit of the new stadium. It will be used for local high school games that are big, and I imagine for high school playoffs, similar to the usage pattern for the baseball stadium. Just like other local educational activities that take place on campus from time to time, this represents another opportunity for Tulane to be a focal point and resource for New Orleans in general.</p>
<p>I think allowing use of the stadium by the local community is great community relations. For example, Northwestern University lends out to local high schools its basketball stadium for many purposes, including graduation. My son’s high school graduation ceremony was there.</p>
<p>[Reserve</a> Your Seat | Yulman Stadium](<a href=“http://www.yulmanstadium.com/ticket-info/reserve-your-seat/]Reserve”>http://www.yulmanstadium.com/ticket-info/reserve-your-seat/)</p>
<p>And now one can reserve seats at Yulman Stadium for next year…</p>
<p>what about parking? I know it’s not an issue for the students, but what about the locals and visitors?</p>
<p>Not an issue…I don’t know many people that drive in NOLA. Everyone takes public transportation or bikes. Parking is bad all over the city. We have rented a car once in almost 20 years of visiting and that was to tour the plantations.</p>
<p>There is only one reason why parking could become an issue: if many Green Wave fans (or perhaps even other Louisiana schools if out-of-conference schedules contain many Louisiana schools) came from outside New Orleans itself. But is it actually the case?</p>
<p>It probably won’t be the case much when Tulane joins its new conference after this year. Even if we do schedule an out of conference game with a school such as Louisiana Tech, I would think it is more likely they would charter buses for the fans rather than very many of them driving themselves. But I also understand that there will be parking at remote lots with shuttles, so for the most part parking shouldn’t be a huge issue.</p>
<p>And is 30,000 an appropriate capacity for Tulane’s on-campus stadium? I understand that real estate issues didn’t allow Tulane to build any bigger, though.</p>
<p>TU draws maybe 15k per game currently.</p>
<p>Consistently filling up a 30k stadium would represent wild success.</p>
<p>Having more demand than can be acommodated in the new stadium would be a high class problem to have. You could solve that problem by expanding the stadium (ssshhhh – don’t let the neighbors hear that) or by playing a high demand game (like LSU) in the dome.</p>
<p>But is 30k too big for Tulane even?</p>
<p>I don’t think so. A lot more students will probably attend the games when the games are on campus, and I think more locals as well. Taking the streetcar or bus to the campus and walking to the stadium is a more attractive proposition to people that live in New Orleans than driving to the Dome. And of course if Tulane continues to put a competitive team on the field, as they are this year, more people will want to come. Also, since New Orleans is such an attractive destination for others, when we play schools that have relatively easy access to NOLA (U Houston and SMU for example, as well as Louisiana teams that I assume we will continue to play as non-conference opponents) I would expect a lot of their students and fans to come.</p>
<p>The NCAA rule used to be that you had to have a 30k capacity stadium in order to be in division 1A football. I think the current rule is that you have to average 15k in attendance.</p>
<p>So if you plan to be D1A, it wouldn’t make much sense to build a brand new stadium smaller than 30k.</p>
<p>That’s an interesting tidbit, northwesty. I am trying to think of how that relates to anything the NCAA is really supposed to be about, the student-athlete. Is there any way to interpret that rule other than proving that they are more about money instead? Oh well, relatively moot point I suppose. I think big changes are coming to college football vis-a-vis the NCAA in the next few years, anyway. Depends on several factors, like the courts rulings on student-athlete’s rights, antitrust status of the NCAA, decisions by the very biggest programs on how to proceed, etc.</p>
<p>Also, there is a lot of history in having a stadium at Tulane, it was a very special place for many people - not just for Tulane games, but for early Saints games as well. So much of Tulane’s legacy was destroyed after Katrina (abolition of the School of Engineering and Newcomb College), perhaps having a stadium on campus will help alumni feel a bit more connected to the school they once loved.</p>
<p>I am appalled at the low rate of student turnout at games, to be honest, and I hope the location nearby will drive it up. I have fond memories of college football games, despite my college team being truly awful. I keep pushing my Tulane student son to attend games, and he refuses to go to the Super Dome; the new location will make it harder for him to blow off games, I hope.</p>