To date, the city of New Orleans has hosted 11 Super Bowls and 91 Sugar Bowls. However, the first three Super Bowls and the first 40 Sugar Bowls played in New Orleans were not played in the vast, cozy confines of the Superdome but rather in the dreary, roofless Tulane Stadium. But while it may look unappealing to the eye, the stadium hosted some of the sport's most legendary teams and heroic players while showing the world the possibilities of holding the biggest events in the Big Easy. This is its story.
The Concept
Under the direction of coach Clark Shaughnessy, the Tulane University football team had become quite good in recent years. Playing their games in the second version of Tulane Stadium, they had finished the 1923 season with a 6-3-1 record. Impressed with their team, a group of 6,000 New Orleanians scrounged up $300,000 to construct a football stadium for their beloved university.
The noted architect Emile Weil was hired to design the new stadium, something that he wasn't overly familiar with. The man loved dabbling in Beaux-Arts classicism as evidenced by his work all around New Orleans such as the Witney National Bank of 1911 and the renaissance-inspired arcade in Thomas Sully's Hennen Building. Still, he had designed numerous theaters for the Saenger company in seven different cities and was certain that he could design a simple yet elegant football stadium.
The Glory Years
After breaking ground on April 7, 1924, the 35,000-seat Tulane Stadium opened for business on October 23, 1926. Tulane lost their first game in their new building, 2-0 to Auburn, but by that point losing had almost become expected of the team. Although the Green Wave had gone undefeated the previous year, 1926 was more than just a bit of a let down as they stumbled through a long three win campaign in Shaughnessy's last year with the program.
With a new building in hand, civic leaders were constantly looking for creative ways to make money. Since it was built on the site of a former sugar plantation where the product was first granulated in the United State, a group of local business men led by attorney Warren Miller and sports journalist Fred Digby gathered the funds and support necessary to start a college bowl game in 1935. Its name: the Sugar Bowl.
By then, Tulane had gotten back to its winning ways and beat Temple 20-14 in the first Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1935 in front of just 22,000. The Bowl game's leaders didn't have to wait long for the nation to take notice as Santa Clara College shocked the college football world by beating mighty LSU in back-to-back Sugar Bowls in 1937 and 1938. From then on, the Sugar Bowl wasn't just a local favorite, it was a national institution.
By the end of the 1930's, Tulane Stadium had already gone under extensive renovations, with north end zone stands being extended to 14,000 capacity in 1937 and a double deck being added all around the stadium to increase capacity to 69,000 in 1939. It underwent its final renovation in 1947 to increase capacity all the way up to 80,985.
Meanwhile, the Sugar Bowl continued to dominate the socio-economic landscape of the Big Easy. Famous ballplayers such as Bobby Layne, Archie Manning and Kenny Stabler all led their teams on that hallowed ground as collegians before starring in the NFL. Still, the city knew that it needed an NFL team to stay relevant.
After spending much of the decade in a war with the AFL, the NFL was hungry for expansion and awarded New Orleans an expansion team in 1966. The Saints began play on September 17, 1967 when John Gilliam returned the opening kickoff 94 yards to give the Saints an early 7-0 lead over the Rams. Although the Saints would eventually lose the game by two touchdowns, it was a memory that refuses to die in the city.
The Demise
Despite the good vibes felt throughout the city due to the continued success of the Sugar Bowl and their start-up NFL team, the stadium was starting to look out of place in the current climate of the NFL. In those days, stadiums were starting to pop up all over the map either in cookie cutter form (i.e. Three Rivers Stadium) or that of a dome (Houston's Astrodome). Compared to those glitzy new buildings, old Tulane Stadium was suddenly out of place.
Shortly after it hosted Super Bowl IV (Chiefs beat Vikings), it was decided that a new stadium would be built downtown. While it hosted two more Super Bowls (Cowboys beat Dolphins in Super Bowl VI), everyone knew that it was on its last legs. The Saints beat the Cardinals 14-0 on December 8, 1974 to close their time at Tulane Stadium. Just three weeks later, Nebraska beat Florida 13-10 for the last Sugar Bowl game ever played at the old sugar plantation. Two weeks, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Vikings in Super Bowl IX to end the NFL's time at Tulane Stadium.
It condemned immediately after and was almost demolished, but Tulane successfully appealed that the old concrete and brick sections were still viable. So for the next five years, it hosted Super Bowl practices and high school games (including state championships) as well as a Z.Z. Top concert that got completely out of hand.
The final game ever played there was between De La Salle High School and Rummel High School on November 1, 1979. Just a day later, it was announced that Tulane Stadium would be demolished. Today, the Reily Student Recreation Center, the Brown Quad and the Diboll parking structure stand in the spot where so many memories were made and where America first drew its gaze upon the Big Easy.
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