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New Orleans Saints steal show from Anderson Cooper at Tulane University's graduation

By Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
May 15, 2010, 3:00PM

Famed CNN newsman Anderson Cooper received loud applause late Saturday morning after commending Tulane University's class of 2010 for earning degrees in post-Katrina New Orleans, a city where his father grew up.

He was, however, upstaged.

The school's newly-minted alums delivered their loudest clapping and hollering to three surprise attendees: New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and executive vice president Rita Benson LeBlanc, who all received medals from President Scott Cowen honoring their win in Super Bowl XLIV.

During his keynote speech at the Louisiana Superdome, Cooper portrayed the graduates' decision to enroll at Tulane just one year after the catastrophic 2005 flood as a big risk.

"But look at you now," he told the students, who included graduates from all of the university's programs. "Your choice has helped this city ... restart."

Cooper told the nearly 2,150 men and women receiving diplomas to expect difficulties searching for careers in a job market that drastically tightened during the ongoing global financial crisis.

But "learning what you don't want to do is the next step to finding out what you do want to do," Cooper assured. As for the unfriendly job climate, he said: "It's happened before, and we've recovered. ... The currents of history move in only one direction, and that direction is forward."

Cooper noted that before he became CNN's chief international correspondent, numerous television stations turned him down for entry-level work after he completed his undergraduate coursework at Yale University in 1989.

Cooper, who often reports from New Orleans and spent more than a month crafting stories from the Gulf Coast area after Katrina ravaged it, also shared the reasons for his fondness of the city.

His father, Mississippi-born author and screenwriter Wyatt Cooper, moved to New Orleans in 1943 and later graduated from Francis T. Nicholls High School on St. Claude Avenue. Wyatt Cooper's mother, meanwhile, worked in the Higgins Hughes plant during World War II and sold ladies' hats from a downtown department store.

Cooper cracked jokes during other parts of his appearance. He quipped that the caps and gowns at the Superdome made him feel like he was "at a Harry Potter convention." He called Cowen "Dumbledore," the headmaster of the fictional wizardry school Potter attends.

He drew head-shaking and nervous chuckles from parents at one point by joking that the students had one last chance to sleep with anyone they liked.

"You'll never see any of these people again after today. Go for it," Cooper said. Several women wolf-whistled when Cooper's past as a youth fashion model came up.

Attention shifted from the Emmy-winning newscaster to the world championship-winning Saints once the ceremony's organizers played a video of Tracy Porter's game-clinching interception at Super Bowl XLIV. A remix of the team anthem, "Halftime (Stand Up and Get Crunk)," blared from the dome's speakers.

People clapped wildly and chanted "Who Dat," a scene similar to one a week earlier at the Superdome when quarterback Drew Brees spoke at Loyola University's commencement.

Vilma, Williams and LeBlanc -- whose names were omitted from the event program and other materials published before the ceremony -- wore academic gowns with white Super Bowl championship hats as they received their medals.

Briefly addressing the crowd, LeBlanc said the hubbub about the Super Bowl "never gets old and should never get old." She then dubbed the class of 2010 "world champion Tulane graduates."

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Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
About Me: Staff writer, The Times-Picayune
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Ramon Antonio Vargas can be reached at rvargas@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3371