re: Best Football Stadium in the SEC.

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Jordan Hare

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Very loud.

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After the '38 Santa-Clara-LSU game, which drew 39,000, Digby, in a front-page column in the New Orleans Item, again stoked the notion of a 60,000-seat stadium, suggesting the issuance of debenture bonds to cover the $200,000 project.

Favorable reaction came from near and far, including an endorsement from former World War I flying ace Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker, then-president of Eastern Airlines, Louisiana Governor Richard Leche wrote Digby an eight-page letter and promised that the state would take $3,000 of the issuance. Mike O'Leary, manager of the historic old St. Charles Hotel, spoke for many when he declared: "Let us strike while the iron is hot."

After weeks of studying sketches, the Sugar Bowl membership, with Tulane's approval, decided to build the capacity to 70,000 backed by $550,000 in debentures, which were to be paid off at the rates of $25,000 a year.

Each purchaser of a $100 bond would be given the option of buying two choice Sugar Bowl tickets prior to public distribution, and two percent interest would be paid after five years. It doesn't sound like much now, but 40 days after the drive began on March 7, 1939, the goal was reached.

The contract was awarded to Doullut & Ewing, Inc., and the firm itself purchased $40,000 in debentures to guard against any contingencies that could possibly arise, "We'll have that stadium ready for Jan. 1, 1940," said Jim Ewing to the Sugar Bowl when the company got the contract. "It will be a close fit, but we won't let you down."

The fit was even closer than Ewing thought. Originally it was thought the enlargement would be concrete, but the cost would have exceeded the $550,000. So the addition to the bowl and the double-decking of the side stands were made of steel. The war in Europe threatened to skyrocket expenses in steel, and it became mandatory that the metal needed for the stadium be obtained without delay. This could be done only with a cash outlay above the partial payment already made. It was June before the first piling was driven. Working constantly, except on Saturdays when Tulane played home games, using steel from the Virginia Bridge Company of Birmingham, the contractors met the deadline between the end of Tulane's season and prior to Jan. 1, 1940. Tulane Stadium was now a complete bowl and the largest stadium in the South.

The expanded stadium wasn't enough, even for one year. A record Southern crowd of 73,000 poured into the gates for top-ranked Texas A&M and Tulane. Even Arch Underwood, a director of the Cotton Bowl, was in attendance.

"I think the Sugar Bowl I remember best was the first time I sat in the press box high above the west stands and looked across at the double-deck packed with people, the Tulane-Texas A&M game....It looked like a beautiful painting hanging from the heavens."

It still wasn't enough to satiate fan interest. In early 1947 President Sam Corenswet appointed a committee to look into the feasibility of further expansion. Chairman Joseph David presented a plan to extend and double-deck the north end zone, which would add 12,241 seats and make Tulane a complete bowl.

The 1949 match between national champion Oklahoma and North Carolina was the first played in the expanded seat stadium, which now was a gigantic 82,000 seats. Even with that space, even for those with pull and clout, tickets still weren't always easy to come by - at least for one game a year.

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So you've never been there, right?

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