re: What moron decided that Tulane should leave the SEC in 1966?

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Tulane's move was purely academic I would imagine since most schools and programs in the south were a lot different academic wise than tulane strived to be.

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I remember some of the talk that was around when TU dropped its SEC affiliation. It was both academic and competition reasons that drove the change. The "Harvard of the South" thing was part of it; the egghead professor elites wanted Tulane to be a more refined, Ivy League kind of place. The other issue was that they weren't spending the $$ necessary to keep up with hated rivals LSU and Ole Miss, and weren't experiencing the kind of gridiron success in the late 1950s/'60s that had made the Tulane brand prominent once upon a time. Also there was the factor of the stadium; when they later moved to the Superdome, the venue changed and the campus was no longer the center for Green Wave fans. I think this was (and remains) a big problem for the Tulane fanbase. The old Sugar Bowl stadium on campus was a great place to play and watch football - but parking there was a nightmare.