UL football team enjoys time with children at both Children's Hospital and the Aubudon Zoo in New Orleans (Photos: Carmen Cetnar and Lance Dunn)

NEW ORLEANS - It's almost expected that collegiate football teams who take part in bowl games get ot in their host city and try to help make an impact in the local community.

But, as with everything else, few do it like the Ragin' Cajuns.

UL's football squad celebrated its third day of activities at the R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl Thursday by doing something that most teams don't do – the team divided forces and doubled their impact.

The senior members of the squad went with Cajun head coach Mark Hudspeth to Children's Hospital in New Orleans, taking just over an hour to visit with many of the youthful patients and doing their best to brighten some days.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad – as the legendary group The Meters once said -- headed on down to the Audubon Zoo, where they linked up with a group of underprivileged children from a local elementary school. The juniors, sophomores and freshmen toured the zoo with just over 40 boys and girls.

Most teams make one such venture into the community. The Cajuns made two at one time ... and they would have likely done more if they'd had the time or been able to work out the logistics.

"The whole goal is to spend time with kids that might otherwise be headed in a different direction," says New Orleans native, former Cajun football standout and UL director of football operations Troy Wingerter. "Our guys have always had a good rapport with the community."

The hospital trip wasn't even the first for the Cajuns since the end of the regular season, and Thursday's trip to the zoo wasn't their only interaction with youth in the last week. Several squad members visited with many of the younger patients at Lafayette General Medical Center last week.

Over the past weekend, before the squad left Lafayette, part of the squad joined many of the participants in Lafayette's Boys and Girls Clubs for some interaction. Hudspeth has been an advocate of his team working with the Boys and Girls Clubs since his arrival last winter.

"Our kids know they have a platform," Wingerter says. "They know how important it is for some of these kids to see a positive adult role model. We know that things like that don't just happen all the time, but we want them to at least try to be a beacon ... to impact those lives in some way. And every little bit of that we can do helps."

PARTY TIME IN NOLA: It's very difficult to describe what it was like at Walk-On's Thursday night. Suffice it to say that the unofficial gathering point for UL football fans – other than the New Orleans Marriott headquarters hotel – featured more red and white than your Christmas candy cane.

It wasn't as hard to set the scene that took place about two hours later in front of the Marriott, where hundreds of Ragin' Cajun football fans fell in line behind the UL Pride of Acadiana marching band and "second-lined" their way down Bourbon Street.

The latter isn't unusual in the Crescent City, since such scenes happen every Mardi Gras season. And for the Cajun faithful, every day has been like Mardi Gras since mid-October when UL became bowl eligible and all but locked down a trip to Saturday's R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl.

The "official" bid came three weeks ago and rumors of UL claiming a spot in the nearest bowl to the Acadiana area were circulating much earlier. But it wasn't until Thursday night, when the Cajun Nation began descending into Canal Street for the weekend's festivities, before those followers actually got to take part in a "bowl" activity.

They didn't waste the opportunity.

Music echoed off surrounding buildings as the UL band went through some of its familiar standards as the crowd in front of the Marroitt began to gather, and just after 9:30 p.m. the horde departed behind a police-car escort. The more-prepared had red-and-white parasols and swayed to the music. The more-inebriated swayed for a completely different reason.

The walking parade was last seen somewhere around the 400 block of Bourbon Street, where the band stopped and played the Fight Song in front of Rita's.

It was the first of two such marches. A similar parade is set for Friday, when fans will again gather in front of the Marriott at 5:15 p.m. to "second-line" to the Riverwalk Marketplace's Spanish Plaza for the bowl's annual "Free For All" celebration. Music by the Rebirth Brass Band and the Givers, along with both the UL and San Diego State bands, will be featured in a free event open to the public beginning at 5:30 p.m.

A lot of the fans who took part in Thursday's "second-line" got their start a couple of hours earlier at Walk-On's, just down the street from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. UL's radio network has been doing its evening shows from that location since Tuesday, but Thursday night's broadcast also included Cajun coach Mark Hudspeth.

It was already loud before that 7 p.m. show, but it only took a second to get louder when Coach Hud made his way in.

"This has already been a great experience for our players," Hudspeth said to the radio audience and the packed house on hand. "They're having a blast. They're excited about the opportunity to play here, but they also know it's time to get to work."