This is what Troy Dannen and Willie Fritz said Sunday night during the Armed Forces Bowl teleconference:
DANNEN
"We're thrilled with the opportunity, one to come to Fort Worth and play in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, but two, to get to play Southern Miss, who is a long-standing rival of Tulane. Now Tulane's 23-7 on the wrong side of that rivalry, so (I don't know) if you can call it a rivalry with that type of margin, but we're looking forward to the game and the opponent and certainly the destination.
"I woke up this morning thinking we were going to be in the Dallas Metroplex for a bowl game, flew to New York for the National Football Foundation event and when I landed, I got a text, give me a call, we may have a different destination for you. We were all thrilled with the opportunity. One, a standalone bowl game on Jan. 4 is certainly a great opportunity for exposure, but with our conference basketball tournament moving to Fort Worth, we have a large alumni contingent in the Metroplex and getting everyone used to coming to Fort Worth and becoming a second home to Tulane in Texas is a great opportunity for us.
"The military association and tie-in is certainly significant, one, with playing Navy every year and this year Army and Navy on our schedule, and the newly installed superintendent of Marine Corps, David Berger, is a Tulane alum, and I got to spend some time with him this year, so there are so many institutional ties to the armed forces. It's a natural fit for us in a lot of ways."
Do you have a special tie to the military as well?
"My oldest daughter is year 4 of active duty. She's a medic stationed in Colorado Springs, the lucky girl, and has had quite an experience. We were all in Iowa at the time when she went active, and she's really enjoyed her time and is a different person than she was when she went in, and I don't think she or I or anyone else knew how much of a different person she was going to evolve to being in the Army. I've reached out to her to try to tell her about this and make sure she understands this is not a celebration of her, it's a celebration of everyone, but I haven't had a chance to talk to her. She's working today but she'll be thrilled and hopefully she'll come down for the game."
This is the second straight year you've had an attractive matchup with a regional rival or in-state team, and this one came out of the blue. Who do you give the credit to for arranging this game?
"First of all, everyone needs to understand our fan base is fired up. We just signed a four-year contract with Southern Miss. It's the game that our fans want to continue to play in the region, and while we're coming to Fort Worth to do it, everybody's fired up. I'll always point my thanks to Pete Durst at ESPN because I know ESPN is doing scheduling, but when I was reached out to say would you be interested if we could get this done, it was an absolute strong and hard yes, especially when we found out who the opponent was. It couldn't have worked out any better for us."
How significant is the opportunity to win back-to-back bowl games for a program that has not had a lot of historical success in the postseason?
"Tulane's won five bowl games in 126 years, so we haven't won many at all. This is only the second time we've been to back-to-back bowl games. As we're trying to build a competitive program and then build consistent success, the ability to just be in a bowl is significant. Last year we won five of our last six (actually four of five) to get to the bowl. This year we lost five of our last six, but in those five games those teams averaged over nine games. It just happened to be how our schedule lined up. We feel like we have a very good team. We have a top-25 in the country offense and a defense that's in the top half of the country. The program's evolving and getting better and better and this is a chance to showcase what our guys are doing."
Is Willie Fritz definitely going to be your coach next year?
"He's definitely going to be our coach. If people aren't poking around at your coach, you probably don't have a program at the level you want it to be, and it's actually a compliment to everybody associated with Tulane that people do start to poke around your coach. Willie's been very transparent with me along the way, but it's nothing that really concerned me at all from the get go. He's going to be my coach. He's going to have a long-term extension that we've agreed upon that we'll announce formally in the future, but Willie's done a remarkable job of getting Tulane football, one, credible, but two to the point where competitively we're doing things that we just hadn't done in our school's history."
Is that what you want when other schools are looking at your coach?
"Fans hate to hear this, but I love it when people are poking around our coaches and looking at our coaches. Since the year 2000 I think Tulane's fired eight coaches in our major sports, and none o them have left because they had the level of success that someone else was looking at them aspiring to hire them, so to be in that position in our football program right now, I'll take that any day of the week, so then it becomes my job to try to make it attractive enough and make sure we keep coaches like Willie around. I'm thrilled that we're going to have him, but the fact of the matter is as a Group of Five (team), when you have success someone's going to look at your coach and say I want him and you are going to have the ability and resources to pay more, but money isn't the determining factor for every coach. It's all aspects of the job and certainly where you live, and New Orleans is a tremendous place to live."
DANNEN
"We're thrilled with the opportunity, one to come to Fort Worth and play in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, but two, to get to play Southern Miss, who is a long-standing rival of Tulane. Now Tulane's 23-7 on the wrong side of that rivalry, so (I don't know) if you can call it a rivalry with that type of margin, but we're looking forward to the game and the opponent and certainly the destination.
"I woke up this morning thinking we were going to be in the Dallas Metroplex for a bowl game, flew to New York for the National Football Foundation event and when I landed, I got a text, give me a call, we may have a different destination for you. We were all thrilled with the opportunity. One, a standalone bowl game on Jan. 4 is certainly a great opportunity for exposure, but with our conference basketball tournament moving to Fort Worth, we have a large alumni contingent in the Metroplex and getting everyone used to coming to Fort Worth and becoming a second home to Tulane in Texas is a great opportunity for us.
"The military association and tie-in is certainly significant, one, with playing Navy every year and this year Army and Navy on our schedule, and the newly installed superintendent of Marine Corps, David Berger, is a Tulane alum, and I got to spend some time with him this year, so there are so many institutional ties to the armed forces. It's a natural fit for us in a lot of ways."
Do you have a special tie to the military as well?
"My oldest daughter is year 4 of active duty. She's a medic stationed in Colorado Springs, the lucky girl, and has had quite an experience. We were all in Iowa at the time when she went active, and she's really enjoyed her time and is a different person than she was when she went in, and I don't think she or I or anyone else knew how much of a different person she was going to evolve to being in the Army. I've reached out to her to try to tell her about this and make sure she understands this is not a celebration of her, it's a celebration of everyone, but I haven't had a chance to talk to her. She's working today but she'll be thrilled and hopefully she'll come down for the game."
This is the second straight year you've had an attractive matchup with a regional rival or in-state team, and this one came out of the blue. Who do you give the credit to for arranging this game?
"First of all, everyone needs to understand our fan base is fired up. We just signed a four-year contract with Southern Miss. It's the game that our fans want to continue to play in the region, and while we're coming to Fort Worth to do it, everybody's fired up. I'll always point my thanks to Pete Durst at ESPN because I know ESPN is doing scheduling, but when I was reached out to say would you be interested if we could get this done, it was an absolute strong and hard yes, especially when we found out who the opponent was. It couldn't have worked out any better for us."
How significant is the opportunity to win back-to-back bowl games for a program that has not had a lot of historical success in the postseason?
"Tulane's won five bowl games in 126 years, so we haven't won many at all. This is only the second time we've been to back-to-back bowl games. As we're trying to build a competitive program and then build consistent success, the ability to just be in a bowl is significant. Last year we won five of our last six (actually four of five) to get to the bowl. This year we lost five of our last six, but in those five games those teams averaged over nine games. It just happened to be how our schedule lined up. We feel like we have a very good team. We have a top-25 in the country offense and a defense that's in the top half of the country. The program's evolving and getting better and better and this is a chance to showcase what our guys are doing."
Is Willie Fritz definitely going to be your coach next year?
"He's definitely going to be our coach. If people aren't poking around at your coach, you probably don't have a program at the level you want it to be, and it's actually a compliment to everybody associated with Tulane that people do start to poke around your coach. Willie's been very transparent with me along the way, but it's nothing that really concerned me at all from the get go. He's going to be my coach. He's going to have a long-term extension that we've agreed upon that we'll announce formally in the future, but Willie's done a remarkable job of getting Tulane football, one, credible, but two to the point where competitively we're doing things that we just hadn't done in our school's history."
Is that what you want when other schools are looking at your coach?
"Fans hate to hear this, but I love it when people are poking around our coaches and looking at our coaches. Since the year 2000 I think Tulane's fired eight coaches in our major sports, and none o them have left because they had the level of success that someone else was looking at them aspiring to hire them, so to be in that position in our football program right now, I'll take that any day of the week, so then it becomes my job to try to make it attractive enough and make sure we keep coaches like Willie around. I'm thrilled that we're going to have him, but the fact of the matter is as a Group of Five (team), when you have success someone's going to look at your coach and say I want him and you are going to have the ability and resources to pay more, but money isn't the determining factor for every coach. It's all aspects of the job and certainly where you live, and New Orleans is a tremendous place to live."