TULANE TALK

October 2, 2009

Good Morning:

Next week will be one of the most festive of the year as we celebrate Homecoming 2009. Parents and families from all over the country will descend on campus to spend time with their students during the annual Parent/Family Weekend. At various reunions, alumni will renew friendships that changed their lives. These and all the other traditions, remembrances, concerts and the big game that will make Homecoming 2009 so memorable can be found at http://tulane.edu/homecoming/week.cfm.

I also want to spotlight an extra special part of this year’s celebration, the Hullabaloo Homecoming, an auction and party that will benefit Tulane’s student-athletes. The chairs of this event, which will take place from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., Oct. 9 at the Lavin-Bernick Center, are Jill Glazer, a Tulane parent, board member and civic leader, Shaun King, a Tulane great, former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst and Brenda Dickson, a Tulane parent and wife of Athletic Director Rick Dickson.

With chairs of this caliber, we were expecting great things and, boy, did they deliver. This year’s Hullabaloo Homecoming promises to be like no other. The evening will feature live music, great food and a chance to visit with Tulane student-athletes past and present. The signature event of the evening will be an incredible auction hosted by local news personality Lee Zurik.

The more than 240 items to be auctioned include tickets to the Super Bowl, the U.S. Open and Masters; suite (and sweet) packages for New Orleans Saints, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers and English Manchester United Football Club games; a Saturday with ESPN Football Analyst Shaun King at ESPN Headquarters as he, Kordell Stewart and others break down the day’s games; tickets for “Live with Regis and Kelly” and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”; VIP seats for the “The Bonnie Hunt Show”; the Brad Paisley concert; the “Ellen DeGeneres Show”; the “Dr. Phil Show”; an Eli Manning autographed Giants jersey; a Tommy Lasorda autographed baseball; a Yao Ming autographed Houston Rockets jersey; dinner prepared by chef Tory McPhail of Commander’s Palace and shared with James Carville, Mary Matalin and Margie and me at our home; the opportunity to have best-selling author James Patterson’s next book dedicated to you and one of the book’s characters named for you; a seven night Caribbean Cruise for two; and much, much more.

Tickets for the Hullabaloo Homecoming, which is open to the public, are $20 and dress for the event is “come as you are.” But there are a limited number of tickets so please register early by calling (504) 865-5356 or visiting http://tulane.edu/homecoming/hullabaloo. At this link you can also bid online now for many of the auction items mentioned above, register for the Super Bowl ticket raffle and, if you can’t be in New Orleans for the big night, submit absentee bids for the auction items that will be available only the night of the Hullabaloo Homecoming.

But I do hope to see you there and, maybe, for dinner.

Have a great weekend,