Tulane Stadium stood on the Uptown campus for fifty-four years and at its largest seated 80,985 — the biggest stadium in the South. Three Super Bowls. Four decades of Sugar Bowls. Eight Saints seasons before the Superdome opened in 1975. A working stadium with no pretension and no architectural ambition other than scale: an enormous concrete bowl where the weather was bad and the sightlines were honest.
November 8, 1970. Two seconds left, Saints down by two, forty-five yards past the range of any field goal in NFL history. Tom Dempsey — born without toes on his right kicking foot, playing on a modified half-shoe — hit one from sixty-three yards. The ball went through. The Saints won 19–17. The record stood for forty-three years. The stadium came down in 1979. The Reily Student Recreation Center sits on its footprint. The goalposts are in Canton.
What stood here
3 surviving images.
"Sugar Bowl Stadium New Orleans". Aerial postcard view of Tulane Stadium with crowded stands and figures on field forming letters spelling "SUGAR BOWL, 1935
"Sugar Bowl Stadium New Orleans". Aerial postcard view of Tulane Stadium with crowded stands and figures on field forming letters spelling "SUGAR BOWL, 1935
The "Sugar Bowl" Tulane Stadium, New Orleans; 1940s air view. (The Willow Street entrance is to the top left.), 1948