What will college athletics look like in the future? How has the student-athlete model changed through the years? What was the greatest Tulane sports moment of our times?

Those were just a few of the questions that Tulane President Michael A. Fitts posed to a panel of Tulanians at the Presidential Speaker Series event that took place during Wave Weekend ’24.

The timely topic of the future of college athletics attracted a packed crowd of alumni, families and other visitors eager to hear the panelists’ thoughts on issues ranging from the changing landscape of college athletics and paying college athletes to the joy of being a sports fan and the dedication and commitment of the typical Tulane student-athlete.

The panel consisted of Gabe Feldman, director of the Tulane Sports Law Program and associate provost for NCAA compliance; Ashley Langford (B ’09), Green Wave women’s basketball coach; and Peter Ricchiuti, senior professor of practice in the A. B. Freeman School of Business.

Green Wave athletics is on a roll, Fitts said, with the continued ascendancy of Tulane football, championships in numerous sports and student-athletes excelling in their studies. There are also new facilities in the works and three new dynamic leaders — Director of Athletics David Harris, Head Football Coach Jon Sumrall, and Langford, who was a standout point guard for the women’s basketball team from 2005 to 2009.

Fitts asked Langford what it was like to be a student-athlete during her time at Tulane. She said her priority was balancing academics with athletics. “I love basketball, but academics and athletics go together. That’s just who I was. That’s how I was raised,” she said, while crediting her father as her number-one mentor.

She said she also owed her success to support from her advisors and coaches, and she makes sure her athletes know they have that same kind of support at Tulane.

Twenty years later, the landscape has shifted, and she said one of her challenges as a coach is recruiting players under the new N.I.L. rules that allow college athletes to control and profit from their name, image and likeness.

Fitts asked Feldman for his appraisal on how N.I.L. and the transfer portal, which allows student-athletes to place their name in an online database and declare their desire to transfer to another school, have changed college athletics. Feldman said the changes have been staggering.

“We have to find a happy medium,” Feldman said. “The NCAA better do something quickly or they may lose the ability to control it. We still have a window to decide what we want college sports to be like.”

Fitts asked Ricchiuti, a rabid Green Wave fan throughout his decades as a beloved Tulane professor, to name his most memorable Tulane sports moments. They included the baseball team’s appearance in the College World Series in 2005 and the football team’s legendary Cotton Bowl win in 2023.

“We’ve had some great teams,” Ricchiuti said. “I think we do everything well [at Tulane], but sports is just so unifying. Sports is what brings us together.”