Tulane Spring Football Game Set for This Saturday
By Dean Mullen
The time has finally come for the Tulane Green Wave football team to show the “new look” of their program under new head coach Willie Fritz.
This Saturday at 12 p.m. at Yulman Stadium, admission is 100% free — so this is a great time to come out and show your support for college football right here in New Orleans.
There will be concessions set up for the game, as well as an autograph session following the game. There also will be a chance to win some free prizes, for just coming out. Furthermore, fans will receive a 2016 Tulane Football poster.
This is all part of a rehauling of Tulane athletics in general, under new Athletic Director Troy Dannen. The new athletic director has made it very clear that winning at Tulane will be expected.
This is going to be hard for many to believe, since Tulane has seen its football program struggle for a long, long time in recent years.
There is definitely a buzz surrounding the two new hires that have come to the Tulane Athletic Department; in Fritz along with his new basketball counterpart in head coach Mike Dunleavy Sr.
Tulane has instantly become relevant simply by putting the right people in place to succeed.
New Tulane head coach Willie Fritz (photo courtesy of sportsnola.com)
Newly hired Willie Fritz comes in with a new style of offense, which should bring excitement to the Green Wave faithfuls. The option offense has no doubt been disappearing, since the mid to late 90’s.
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However, there are a couple of programs that have consistently won using it, like Georgia Tech and Navy. Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson especially has incorporated a flexbone offense in 2008, that he’s used there and Georgia Southern.
Its no secret that Willie Fritz picked up some of the teaching, while he was a head coach at Georgia Southern years later.
Johnson who also led Navy to five straight bowl games and five straight winning seasons had this to say about the option:
"“All of a sudden there was this stigma attached to it, that you’re not supposed to use it anymore. Well Why not? I think its because those really strong Miami teams beat some Oklahoma option teams by throwing the ball. And that was about it. Then they would say its an offense for overmatched teams, when you don’t have equal talent. At Georgia Southern we had equal or better talent than the team we were playing, and we went 62-10.”"
The fact is that the option has been used effectively in the past, and Tulane will now try and emulate the few remaining programs that do it well.
This type of dramatic shift may take some time for some of the players to get adjusted. Once they can get familiar with the type of reads, the option can be run very smooth and consistent. The key will be to get the players to buy into it and execute.
Its been way too long since Tulane has been relevant.
New Orleans is hungry for outside college football in September and October.
I gotta believe that if Tulane can simply win, the fans will come.
Tulane has done it before.
Now we’ll soon get to see, if history can repeat itself………..