Tulane Football Leaders Reveal Inspirational Goal as Season Rapidly Approaches
The Tulane Green Wave have high hopes under their new coaching staff, and the experience needed to overcome any early season adversity.
With the schedule Tulane has to start the 2024 season, there’s a chance they’ll go into conference play with a loss on the record. That’s the risk Group of 5 programs take when scheduling teams like Oklahoma and Kansas State.
Losing both matchups won’t bode well for looking forward to the college football playoffs. But it’s entirely possible the Green Wave might drop one of the two.
It would be foolish to overlook the season opener with their eyes solely set on those wins. That’s exactly how Kansas State underestimated the 12-2 Cotton Bowl champions.
While the core values have shifted from 1-0 to attitude, toughness, discipline and love, you can’t throw that mentality out the window.
You can see the same idea applied from the “ATDL” mantra. That same Tulane team lost just one week after their upset at Bill Snyder stadium to Southern Miss, and tensions ran high after the game. Leaders like Nick Anderson stepped in, they locked in, and beat Houston in overtime with their third-string quarterback, now vying for the starting role.
That scenario is a perfect example of the amalgamation of those values; without love, the team may have imploded; without the right attitude, toughness, and necessary discipline, they may have turned on one another or let it carry over.
Expecting a new roster to immediately gel and have a perfect season may be perfectly reasonable. But balls take the wrong bounce; calls go the wrong way; not every facet of a game is controllable. Including an untimely injury. Success is a mixture of a lot of factors, health and luck being intertwined.
What will be most important is this team’s response to adversity. It’s unavoidable in both life and sports. Thankfully, the team has the right leaders at the helm.
In his two seasons as head coach at Troy, Jon Sumrall didn’t get his team off to an undefeated start. They started 1-2 both years – and didn’t lose another game.
When I spoke with Sumrall at AAC Media day about his mentors, he pointed to his time with Mark Stoops as to what truly prepared him to be a head coach. He acknowledged he may have felt ready in 2016-17 but was very process oriented. Football is a lot more about the people. Much like life and relationships, that all comes with ups and downs.
“It wasn’t always comfortable,” Sumrall told me of his 1-2 starts both seasons at Troy. “There’s always going to be some bumps, there’s going to be some turbulence at times. It’s not always easy on the field. But we finished 12-2 and 11-2. It’s about being consistent, steady, and not wavering through the adversity.”
Adversity and leadership can make or break teams, and should the Green Wave not get off to a perfect start, they have just as great an opportunity to respond.
Maddy Hudak is the deputy editor for Tulane on Sports Illustrated and the radio sideline reporter for their football team. Maddy is an alumnus of Tulane University, and graduated in 2016 with a degree in psychology. She went on to obtain a Master of Legal Studies while working as a research coordinator at the VA Hospital, and in jury consulting. During this time, Maddy began covering the New Orleans Saints with SB Nation, and USA Today. She moved to New Orleans in 2021 to pursue a career in sports and became Tulane's sideline reporter that season. She enters her fourth year with the team now covering the program on Sports Illustrated, and will use insights from features and interviews in the live radio broadcast. You can follow her on X at @MaddyHudak_94, or if you have any questions or comments, she can be reached via email at maddy.hudak1@gmail.com