Tulane Football Assigned Surprisingly Low Tier in Final Preseason Rankings
The Tulane Green Wave clearly have a long way to go to earn some respect in regards to where they landed on a major outlet's final preseason rankings.
Beating the buzzer, right before the college football season went underway, ESPN's David Hale put out a tier list of every team in the country.
The Green Wave found themselves in the 10th tier of college football, which was labeled 'Taylor Swift could write a song about this.' It's a reference to their new head coach situation as there was a 'break-up' in the program.
Also put into that tier were the Duke Blue Devils, South Alabama Jaguars, Troy Trojans, UCLA Bruins and Washington Huskies.
"Willie Fritz was inching toward the exit for years at Tulane, but finally landed the head job [with the Houston Cougars]. Jon Sumrall ditched [the Troy Trojans] to replace Fritz in New Orleans. And now all six programs are sifting through the wreckage of portal departures and staff overhauls in hopes of regaining their footing under a new regime."
It's a bittersweet feeling, because the talent that is on the roster is better than a team that is in the '10th tier' of football, but it is hard to argue with the reasoning.
Sumrall has his work cut out for him in his first year in charge of the Green Wave. Fritz's shoes are big ones to fill on campus as he brought the program into relevancy for the first time in a long time. To immediately fall back down in the fist year after him would be heartbreaking.
He is coming back with a good track record and a lot of expectations following him, though. He took over the Trojans program after they had three straight five win seasons. Troy went 23-5 in Sumrall's two seasons at the helm.
He can quickly turn a program back around, so it should be a little bit easier to keep one in the running.
To do so, he went with a heavy transfer portal presence in year one. There are players coming over from the Alabama Crimson Tide, LSU Tigers, Oregon Ducks and even more. A lot of guys that were riding a lot of hype out of high school but it never clicked at their first stop in college.
There are also some returning talents at key positions like running back and defensive line.
With the uncertainty, though, everyone will have to wait at least a year before really deciding what direction the program is headed.
DYLAN SANDERS