I'm from New Orleans, and am sufficiently lucky to reside part-time there and part-time in CT. (I can speak a bit about Tulane's program, not Tulsa's). It would be hard to adequately describe the divergent climate for WCBB there, where it hardly registers on the public-consciousness radar, and here, where it engenders such rabid passion. If you go to NOLA.com, the website for the local New Orleans newspaper, I'd defy you to find so much as a single article on the big victory you correctly reference over LSU. Given the general environment of indifference, and the resultant effect on recruiting, one can only stand back in admiration of the job that the coach, Lisa Stockton, has done down there to give the program any relevance whatsoever. Sadly, this is the reality in many parts of the country, which makes us lucky to be UConn fans, but, I hope, sympathetic toward the realities that most teams face.took down LSU and Arkansas last night....yikes! Maybe a tad more depth in the conference this year than last.
Sounds like a real rump roast...Not sure how much the local media even matters anymore for a lot of teams, especially with the players of today probably not reading newspapers much at all and just hooking into the national online info sources. They could likely care less if the local media is just consumed by the huge success of the Tulane and LSU football teams.
The WCBB AAC arrived last year in its second season, just as AAC football is having a very nice year this fall. Apologies to the SEC fans who visit here but their conference has been on the downturn for a long time, and games like Tulsa's road win over Arkansas and Tulane's home win over LSU are no longer a surprise. Two years ago when the Razorbacks played and won 13 straight OOC games against overmatched teams with 12 of them at home, Tulsa lost that game to Ark by 38 points. Two years later after a better diet in the AAC, it's now the Golden Hurricane that's kicking hog butt.
But of course it will be years down the road before the SEC posters and even many BYers will stop referring to the high school level play of AAC teams.