Nathan Deen, the Georgia Southern beat writer for the Savannah, Ga. newspaper, got an interview with Fritz Friday night and tweeted some of the comments:

The pertinent tweets:

1) Willie Fritz said he was attracted by the idea of building a winner at #Tulane.

2) Fritz: “It was a tough decision. My wife and I have really enjoyed Statesboro, and everyone’s treated us extremely well."

3) Fritz: “It’s the opportunity to do something that’s never been done there before."

4) Fritz: "(@TU_Dannen ) knows it’s going to be quite a chore, and he felt like I was the right guy for the job."

5) Fritz's contract with Georgia Southern states his buyout drops from $800,000 to $100,00 because Brooks Keel left the school this year

6) Ga Southern AD() Kleinelin says Fritz probably won't coach bowl game.

If he does coach the bowl game, I will be there to cover it in Mobile.

I thought Fritz, at 55, was going to be the oldest, but the honor went to Mark Richt, who is 43 days older.

The full list:


Mark Richt 55 Miami

Willie Fritz 55 Tulane

Dino Babers 54 Syracuse

Bronco Mendenhall 49 Virginia

Will Muschamp 44 South Carolina

Mike Jinks 43 Bowling Green

Chris Ash 41 Rutgers

Scott Frost 40 UCF

Kirby Smart 39 Georgia

Justin Fuente 39 Virginia Tech

Barry Odom 39 Missouri

D.J. Durkin 37 Maryland

Nick Rolovich 36 Hawaii

Jason Candle 36 Toledo

Matt Campbell 36 Iowa State

Mike Norvell 34 Memphis

Seth Littrell 30s North Texas * No exact age on Wikipedia page, but he finished at Oklahoma in 2001 so probably 36 or 37.

This came from Jason Howell of Rivals earlier today.

LaFrance was one who would have been good to keep, but that's the price Tulane will be willing to pay. There are always defections when a new coach comes aboard.

Every time a coach leaves a school, the kids he has recruited tend to become fair game. Tulane has already seen a couple who chose to decommit after CJ’s firing. I also noticed that Mark Richt, the new head coach at Miami, has said he’d be interested in any of the commits he had at Georgia who, having chosen the school at least in part due to the coaching staff, might be interested in following him.

So, I thought I’d take a look at who Georgia Southern has committed. Interestingly enough, their class is rated higher than Tulane’s by everyone, though I don’t put much stock in that. They do have several very interesting commits that I’d think would deserve a look. One, Drew Wilson, a 6’3 285# offensive guard from South Carolina had offers from Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kansas State, Louisville, UNC, North Carolina State, and Virginia Tech among others. Maybe all of those folks are wrong, but we’ve not had many people with that many P5-level offers, well, ever.

Another one is a wide receiver from Georgia, Jacob Robertson, who has 15 offers, including ones from Miami, Pitt, and Tennessee.

Several others, at least based on the number of P5-level offers, also look good.

I have no idea why these kids chose Georgia Southern over some very high profile schools, but Willie Fritz must be part of the reason. If he can get a solid recruiter to work southern Louisiana and retain his obvious ties across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, we might be able to make some noise in the not-too-distant future.

Roll, Coach Fritz; Roll Wave!!!

With the over-the-top negativity that has been spread about Tulane athletics over the years, here's a counterbalance.

http://sportstalkfeed.com/2015/12/tulane-university-will-become-next-football-dynasty/

Congrats to our new HC! He's been a winner at every stop and is someone who clearly wanted to step up. Looks like a coach who adapts his offense to his talent. At his age he just might stay which is an added bonus.

Out of the blue, I just got a call from someone not connected to Tulane who has a reliable source saying Tulane just hired TCU offensive coordinator Doug Meacham.

On paper, that would be a home run hire. Obviously I have to verify it.

From a reliable source at Auburn I have heard he is one is one of the five interviewed.

With Wake Forest releasing its schedule today, we know the dates of Tulane's four non-conference games next year.

The Wave opens on a Thursday for the fourth consecutive year at Wake Forest, following Thursday openers against Duke, Tulsa and Jackson State.

Tulane then plays host to Southern on Sept. 10, travels to UMass on Oct. 1 and faces ULL on Oct. 8 at Yulman. The combined record of the FBS opponents this year was 10-26.

As we already knew, Tulane's home games in the AAC are against Memphis, Navy, SMU and Temple. The road games are against UCF, UConn, Houston and Tulsa. Dates for those games will be announced much later.

Did anyone know about this?

i know Hot Rod is one of the polarizing players in Tulane athletic history, but I'm surprised I had not heard about him being on life support.

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on...-rod-williams-battling-cancer-on-life-support

Yes, I understand media stories don't represent the truth, but the Associated Press listed college football openings and ranked them for attractiveness a little more than a week ago and had Tulane third to last, ahead of only North Texas and ULM and behind Toledo.

The writer even mentioned Tulane would pay well, so he's not clueless. Dannen is having to do a tremendous selling job in New York (where he is conducting this search) that things are ready to really change at Tulane. Never mind what is written. The 14 losing seasons in the last 17 years, 28 in the last 33 and four years with fewer than five losses since 1971 tell the story.

I believe Dannen's hiring and the board's commitment to winning signify a new era in Tulane athletics, but it's not always easy to convince others without proof.

http://nypost.com/2015/11/30/winners-and-losers-from-college-footballs-coaching-carousel/

Guerry,
Any inside info on this? Someone on the gotula.net forum is claiming that he heard an announcement would be made no later than Wednesday. Seems a bit quick considering no leaks re: candidates. Any info you could provide would be great.
Thanks

I keep hearing Tulane wants to announce a new head coach before the end of the week, with a press conference likely early next week, but man, this coaching search is being conducted close to the vest. Nothing wrong with that, but it's hard to find any solid info.

The only known candidate for certain is Yurcich. Here is some background on him.

MIKE YURCICH

His offenses at Oklahoma State have ranked 14th (2013) tied for 73rd (2014) and ninth (2015) in points per game. In rushing offense the Cowboys have finished 63rd, 99th and 109th, so he is a pass-heavy coach, with rankings of 29th, 53rd and seventh this year, when sophomore QB Mason Rudolph had a phenomenal regular season despite a couple of rough games, including a three-interception, no-touchdown performance against West Virginia.

Tanner Lee would like this decision, I believe. Rudolph rushed for minus-12 yard on 62 carries (about 25 of them were sacks), so this is not an offense that relies on the quarterback running. The primary starting QB last year, Daxx Garman, rushed for minus-17 yards. The QBs in 2013, who split time, ran for more than 600 yards combined, so Yurcich is willing to tailor his offense to suit the talents of his QB.

The three Oklahoma State offensive coordinators before Yurcich got head coaching gigs. Larry Fedora, who did not call the plays (head coach Mike Gundy did), has been successful at Southern Misa and at North Carolina, where the Tar Heels were terrific offensively this year. Dana Holgorsen, who did call the plays in his one season as OC in 2010, is in danger of getting fired at West Virginia, where the promise of a 70-point Orange Bowl win over Clemson in 2011 has devolved into a four straight mediocre years with good offense and horrific defense. Todd Monken, who was a candidate for the Tulane job when CJ got hired, needed only three years to revitalize a USM program that hit rock bottom when Ellis Johnson replaced Fedora. Monken and Yurcich have called the plays.

Yurcich is 40.

Here's the most interesting article I found on him:

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...ma-states-prolific-offense-found-mike-yurcich

Based on recent articles on Rivals, it appears that OL commit Keenan Forbes Is, in his words, “out of here.” (https://tulane.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1834453). And DT, Alex Criddle is back to looking. (https://tulane.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1834369).

This, of course, is not surprising, and I would expect others of our commits who have options (ie. other offers) could also be looking elsewhere. The ones I’d personally hate to see us lose are Giovanni LaFrance, Jacq’co Price, Deion Rainey, and Jack Abraham. Because of the departure of coach Dave Johnson, I’m most concerned about LaFrance from St. Augustine, who has many offers. To me, he’s the “star” of our class and could be very tough to retain. Though I'm not that impressed with most of our commits, I hope our new coach is on board soon enough to evaluate them, make a pitch to those he likes, and conclude our recruiting on a high note.

Signing day is only eight weeks away.

Roll Wave!!!

As I was doing research on Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson on the off chance that Tulane would be interested in him, I was stunned to find out who his recruiting coordinator is.

Dan Dodd.

Dodd also is the tight ends coach.

There's no truth to the rumor Arkansas State had success with trick plays that involved only nine men on the field.

Jack Abraham fell a yard short of winning the Mississippi 5A championship last night in a 45-41 loss. His 9 yard run to the one yard line gave Oxford a final chance with 3 seconds to play but his ensuing completion as time expired was for no gain. For the night, he completed 35 passes in 43 attempts for 550 yards and 4 TD’s with 1 INT. For the season, he completed 332 passes in 495 attempts (67%) for 5,091 yards in 15 games. He threw for 57 TD’s and only 6 INT’s. He was named the Mississippi player of the year for 2015 and is one of the ten finalists for Parade Magazine’s National Player of the Year. He presumably will enroll at Tulane in four weeks. Interesting to see how it unfolds.

Roll Wave!!!

I am close to finishing transcribing Dannen's 15-minute interview away from the podium today with multiple reporters, but the quote that stood out to me was when he was asked about going after a hotshot offensive coordinator as head coach.

The way he answered it, I think he would prefer a sitting head coach and will go after one and believes he can get one. He will look at coordinators as well, but he mentioned the history of Tulane's peer institutions that made good football hires, and he did it for a reason.

Here's the question and the quote:

The trend right now is to hire young, hotshot offensive coaches. I know you don’t want to put yourself in a box, but is that your thinking?

“They are in my box and veteran head coaches are in my box. Guys that have been head coaches are in my box, so the box is pretty big right now. I’ve looked at the high-end academic institutions nationally and when have they had success in their hirings. Duke hired a head coach (David Cutcliffe). Northwestern hires an alum (Pat Fitzgerald). Vandy has an assistant (former coach James Franklin). That’s an outlier. Stanford hires a head coach (Jim Harbaugh). He came from San Diego, but he had head coaching experience, so you look at those things, one, you’re comparing yourself to what other schools are doing, but two, nationally you have to start looking at your peers as to what works, so I’m weighing both of those. You look at what Tulsa and SMU just did, but there are going to be high flier OCs in this (search), and I’ve already talked to some of them. There are going to be a couple of DCs in, and I’ve already talked to them.”

My latest intel, which comes second hand: the announcement will be this afternoon, and the name will be a surprise, meaning it's not Burke or Patulski.

Take everything with a grain of salt because the info we've received has been all over the place, and do not mention this on any other message board because it's supposed to be confidential.

I do not know who it will be. It's possible it could be Benedict, but the way the news was presented dovetails with the info I got two days ago that there was a mystery candidate with a good chance to get the job, and Benedict is not a mystery candidate.

I talked to Missouri Valley Conference commissioner Doug Elgin today. He's been the league's commissioner for 28 years, and when I got his phone number off the Internet, I did not expect it to actually be his phone number. It was. I left a message on his voice mail, and he called me back an hour later.

It doesn't work that way in the SEC. Or the AAC for that matter, even though Mike Aresco is very accessible.

Here's what Elgin had to say about Dannen:

What are your thoughts on Dannen and the Tulane job?

"Troy has very strong external skills. He's a good fund-raiser. He's very intelligent, works hard and I think he's a very well-liked individual. He blends the toughness you need on the job as an AD with a real good ability to interact with people. He's going to represent Tulane very, very well."

He grew up on a farm in Iowa and has never worked in the south or a big city like New Orleans. Some people have suggested that part of the job may not be a good fit for him. What's your take?

"He runs a very good organization. I just think he's one of the better administrators we've had in our league over time. You know right away when you're in a job like this those individuals who are going to move up the ladder. I hate to put it that way, but his goal was to get to an FBS institution, and it was pretty clear that he had the skills and the experience to make that happen."

How quickly did he make an impression on you when he took over at Northern Iowa?

"Right away. He came to us from an association. He was the executive director of the girl's high school athletic association, so he understood the role of the conference. I'm trying to think what his ties to Bob Bowlsby were. That's a must call for you. They are really tight. Bob had the (the Northern Iowa AD) job before him, two ADs before, and Bob's a graduate (of Northern Iowa). He's just a very personable guy. He had a good work ethic and a really strong business sense. We've had a lot of really good ADs in our league, but he's certainly one of them that stands out. I don't think the private school profile is going to detract from his contributions there in any way, shape or form. He'll be a great fit in New Orleans, and he'll be someone who can make a difference and hire really good coaches and administrators around him."

Did he have to do a lot with a little at Northern Iowa?

"It's all relative in a sense. If you look at their programs, they are a power in women's volleyball and in basketball they beat North Carolina this year. Their football has been playoff caliber, and all of the state institutions, certainly below the big five level, struggle to a certain degree, but he comes from an institution that has been well-managed by the presidents. I think you're going to like him."

Northern Iowa had incredible stability in coaching, so he did not have to make many hires when he was there, but you don't think he will have any problem in that department?

"Absolutely. He was able to keep one of the hottest coaches in the country at Northern Iowa in Ben Jacobsen. And Bobbi Peterson, the volleyball coach, I'm sure has had suitors. There is a really good camaraderie on Troy's staff. From the outside looking in, there's no perfect utopian institution anywhere, but there was a really good momentum and chemistry in the athletic department at Northern Iowa."

I wrote an article for The Advocate today I don't really believe in, but we'll see. Most of the coaches on the list are sitting head coaches, and the last time a sitting head coach took the Tulane job, it was Buddy Teevens of Dartmouth.

The board and the new AD are going to have to do a tremendous job convincing coaches that Tulane truly is committed to winning, and I'm not sure what they will do when they show them the weight room. Otherwise, I don't see a guy from Bowling Green or Northern Illinois coming to Tulane. I also don't think an option coach like Willie Fritz, whom some championed before Curtis Johnson was hired, is a viable choice.

Anyway, here is the incomplete list team Advocate came up with, which comes from people who are not intimately involved in the process but talk to people who are. The reality is without an AD, it's too early to get a good feel.

1) Dino Babers, head coach, Bowling Green

Plus: He has connections to Barbara Burke and Todd Patulski. He's won at Eastern Illinois and Bowling Green.

Negative: He ain't coming. Again, I'd love for Tulane to prove me wrong, but the MAC is a proven path to Power Five coaching jobs. Tulane can play him more money, but I don't see him moving anywhere that is not in a major conference.

2) Kendal Briles, Baylor offensive coordinator

Plus: It's much more likely for Tulane to attract a young coordinator who want to take the next step. Briles has a connection to Patulski. How much he does with the offense and how much his dad does at Baylor is open to debate, but man, the numbers are sick.

Negative: See the previous sentence. How much is he benefitting from his dad's presence, like Eric Price did at UTEP (though the numbers were nowhere close, ever, to what Baylor is doing). He also was suspended for the opener this year due to a minor recruiting infraction. I have no idea if that would be relevant or not.

3) Rod Carey, Northern Illinois coach

Plus: He's won two MAC titles in two years and is going for a third next week.

Negative: Same issue as Babers. He'd have to really believe Tulane is a better opportunity than a lower-to mid-level Power Five job. I don't see it happening.

4) Scott Satterfield, Appalachian State coach

Plus: He is having an outstanding year after shepherding App St. from the FCS to the FBS the past three seasons. He's in the prime of his coaching career at age 44--not too young and not too old.

Negative: He's spent 15 of his 18 coaching years at App St. after playing there as a QB. That's a long time at one spot. But he would be an attractive candidate. I watched Appalachian State whip Georgia Southern a few weeks ago and was impressed with the physicality.

5) Willie Fritz, Georgia Southern head coach

Plus: He won big right away at Sam Houston State, an FCS program that was not used to winning big before he arrived, and he has won in both of his years at Georgia Southern, which is new to the FBS.

Negative: He runs the triple option or a hybrid of it. Even though GSU leads the nation in rushing yards, that type of offense will be a hard sell to the people selecting the coach. He's also 55.

6) Rhett Lashley, Auburn offensive coordinator

Plus: He works for one of the best offensive minds that has come around in a long time in Gus Malzahn. Auburn reached the BCS title game in his first year as coordinator in 2013.

Negative: Malzahn is hands on offensively. How much does Lashley really do? Plus, Auburn finished outside the top 80 in offense this year and had struggled to move the ball for two straight years.

This was hardly meant to be a comprehensive list, but it was a group of coaches sources said had been discussed.

What are your thoughts? Not just on this list, but on other candidates you want pursued.

I like Hertz...btw, he is on the b.o.d. of my brother in laws bank in Atlanta. Straight shooter. I like how he is bare knuckles and tells it straight. I also loved how he boldly said, "look, this is the hire of his career....". He put it right out there that his career will be tied to his selection. Now, if he can just bring his basketball coach to Tulane.....

http://theamerican.org/news/2015/12/2/FB_1202154553.aspx

Smart was a no-brainer. The only way he would not have been on the first team would have been if coaches discounted Tulane entirely. He had a monster year with 62 tackles--by far the most for an AAC interior lineman--and 15 tackles for loss.

Marley I'm surprised by, but coaches love his work ethic and all-out hustle. He led Tulane with 82 tackles and 13 stops for loss, but I didn't expect the Wave to get two guys on the first team. Temple had four of the 12 defensive first team selections, and Tulane and Houston tied for second most with two.

No other Tulane player was first team, second team or honorable mention.

The finalists interviewed with Fitts on Sunday. I believe there are three, although others are saying there were five. The decision could come tomorrow but likely will be Wednesday. Time is of the essence.

We know two of them--Burke and Patulski.

The third appears to be a mystery candidate. Maybe it is David Benedict of Auburn, but I haven't heard a peep out of anyone on him in the last week, and he doesn't fit the definition of a mystery candidate. When I talked to Doug Hertz a week ago about the interviews that took place in Atlanta, he said some of The Advocate's information was right and some of it was wrong, both on who had interviewed and in omissions.

I even had someone give me info there was a secret female internal candidate from Tulane in addition to Burke. I'm scratching my head.

By most accounts, Momic was a good guy, but my God, how did they wait the extra year after he followed his only good season (28-4 in 2013) with a dreadful debut in the AAC (5-27)?

Maybe, just maybe, coaches will be held accountable for their record in the future. Tulane had a good volleyball program before Momic's seven-year stint.