You have to be specific when you talk about "the football team" at Louisiana Tech these days.

Is it the one that practices from 1 to 3 p.m. each week day? Or the one on the field from 4 to 6 p.m?

The one that wears blue or the one that you'll find in green? The one that has its eyes on the Western Athletic Conference title or a Conference USA bowl?

There is, for example, the one that hosts the University of Hawai'i Saturday and the one that plays Houston down the road.

The former is Louisiana Tech and the latter Tulane but, since Hurricane Katrina spread its destruction along the Gulf Coast Aug. 29, both have come to call Tech's rural Ruston, La., campus home for the season.

Once separated by 250 miles, conference affiliation and public/private school status, after a month together, they now share practice fields, cafeterias, classes and, increasingly, a bond.

"As soon as we finish our game, I know I'll be checking to see how their game (with UH) is going," said John Sudsbury, a Tulane athletic official. "We're Tech fans now, too."

A lot of Tulane players can be found in Tech shirts and hats, and not just because the Green Wave left New Orleans with little more than the T-shirts on its backs, either.

"These people here have really opened up their arms wide to us," said Scott Sidwell, Tulane associate athletic director. "We're grateful every day."

"I think if the roles had been reversed, could we have done for them what they are doing for us?" Sudsbury said.

Though Ruston escaped the direct damage of its down-state neighbors, many students — including a dozen Tech football players — saw their families displaced.

"Our state is on its knees right now and we wanted to do whatever we could," said Jim Oakes, Tech athletic director. "It has just been a terrible time for a lot of people and folks are pitching in."

In the aftermath of Katrina, Tulane scattered its teams and students across several schools in an effort to keep its students in class and its teams playing. Charged with, in the words of Tulane President Scott Cowen, "carrying the torch, face and name of Tulane University," the Green Wave football and women's track teams are part of the 289 displaced students who have found a home at Tech, where the school's invitation and quarter system allowed them to enroll immediately.

It was one thing for Tech to turn over practice facilities, renovate the basketball arena — nicknamed "Tulane Fieldhouse" — for locker rooms and meeting rooms and find dorm and classroom space. It was something else, Tulane officials say, when, after a 450-mile odyssey the Green Wave buses arrived in Ruston to find a welcoming committee that included the Tech band playing the Tulane fight song.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.