Why This Year's Homecoming at Tulane Matters

The distance from Carondelet Avenue in the Upper Garden District of New Orleans to Tulane University is roughly three miles.

To get to the campus from Carondelet Avenue, you go upto Louisana Avenue, which is home to the Who Dat Beauty Supply Store.

You then make a right and head up Louisiana Avenue to Highway 90, otherwise known as Claiborne Avenue to New Orleans residents. As you continue through the many curves of Claiborne Avenue, you pass by places such as Wendy's, Autozone, and various laundromats that double as places in which one can drink beer while washing clothes.

As you reach Palmer Street, one the wealthiest streets in New Orleans, you begin to see more and more olive blue and green. Along with that there's the occasional Roll Wave adorning a house that faces Claiborne. Huge green Tulane flags become more present as you continue towards the campus.

By the time you reach Audubon Boulevard, known for its stately houses, you see more Tulane paraphernalia on houses. As you continue on Audubon, you start to see light towers hovering over the Tulane campus and surrounding neighborhood, light towers that was 40 years in the making.

When Tulane homecoming games were in the Superdome, it felt as if you were spending Saturday mornings watching pee wee football.

More importantly, for a small school like Tulane, homecoming at the Superdome created a huge disconnect between the campus and the alumni that visited their old stomping grounds in Uptown. .

That is until this year.

It has been forty years since the Green Wave welcomed the Kentucky Wildcats for Homecoming at old Tulane Stadium, Tulane will once again have a Homecoming football game on campus as they welcome in the first-place Memphis Tigers Saturday afternoon.

For a new generation of Tulane kids as well as alums who never knew what it was like to tailgate and attend a homecoming game on campus, the game on Saturday will confirm Yulman Stadium as part of the fabric of Tulane life.

Make no mistake, the opening game against the Georgia Tech was a nice gesture for Yulman.

But Saturday's game will be more meaningful.

Because at last, and no disrespect to the great Southern writer Thomas Wolfe, Tulane fans can finally go home again.