Tag: USC Tulane

Wille Fritz is a coaching superstar without the Power Five identity

Willie Fritz doesn’t coach at an elite football school, but he is an elite coach. Learn more about the man who will face Lincoln Riley and #USC in the #CottonBowl.

Willie Fritz is the college football head coach journalists and college football junkies love.

Fritz has done great work at non-Power Five conference programs, the out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten-path coaching stops which don’t receive major national attention.

Lots of us who blog about college football for a living have long felt that lower- or middle-tier Power Five schools in need of a coaching upgrade should have hired Fritz.

No Power Five athletic director has snapped up Fritz yet, however. Tulane is very thankful for that. Fritz, who has coached at Tulane since 2016, has won the AAC championship and the Group of Five title. He has led Tulane to its first New Year’s Six (formerly BCS/Bowl Alliance/Bowl Coalition/New Year’s Day) bowl appearance since the 1940 Sugar Bowl.

Learn more about Tulane’s excellent coach, who will match wits with Lincoln Riley on Jan. 2 in the 2023 Cotton Bowl:

USC Cotton Bowl opponent: Tulane 2022 season review and fast facts about the Green Wave

Learn more about the #Tulane team #USC will face on January 2, plus some fascinating facts about the Green Wave’s football history. #CottonBowl

The USC Trojans have their bowl opponent: the Tulane Green Wave. After Lincoln Riley’s team suffered heartbreak against Utah once again (this time in the Pac-12 title game), the Trojans go from a College Football Playoff spot to the Cotton Bowl.

Still, a New Year’s Six Bowl in the first year of the Riley era is a step in the right direction, and there is a lot to love about a USC-Tulane matchup in Texas. 

With the Cotton Bowl nearly a month away, let’s take a look at Tulane’s season and examine some of the key players as the Trojans try to finish the season with a bowl victory.

USC fans react to the news: the Trojans will face Tulane in the Cotton Bowl

One view among some #USC fans: It will be hard for the Trojans to be motivated for Tulane, and the team will be crushed in the media if it loses.

USC versus Tulane. It’s not the same as playing Ohio State, Michigan, or Georgia. It’s not a matchup which will generate huge national headlines, even though football junkies will love seeing Lincoln Riley match wits with Willie Fritz, two of the more creative and tactically astute head coaches in college football.

The very real possibility that Caleb Williams might not play in this game would take a lot of juice out of the event, but we don’t yet know that for sure. No one could have possibly imagined that USC’s bowl opponent would be one of the least successful programs in college football over the past 80 years … or that a program with Tulane’s minimal stature would get to a New Year’s Six game and meet the Trojans on that big stage.

USC fans realized on Saturday afternoon that Tulane would be the bowl opponent and the Cotton would be the game, which was subsequently confirmed on Sunday. Here’s a small taste of those reactions from the Trojan fan base:

USC vs Tulane in 2023 Cotton Bowl

#USC will face the #Tulane Green Wave in the 2023 #CottonBowl. The Trojans make the #NewYearsSix and earn a due reward for an 11-win regular season.

The announcements on Sunday will make it official, but as of Saturday evening, the USC Trojans appear to know what their bowl destination and opponent will be.

The Trojans are going to be in the New Year’s Six — that’s not an official report from us (though we told you to expect it a week ago once USC beat Notre Dame in the Los Angeles Coliseum). It’s straight from the foremost bowl projection experts who have sources within the bowls and know the internal aspects of this process.

Brett McMurphy of Action Network is usually the college football journalist/insider who tweets out the bowl matchups on bowl selection day. After Tulane beat UCF on Saturday evening, McMurphy wasted absolutely no time saying where USC was headed for its bowl game. He didn’t use a bunch of “coulds” or “maybes” or “chance of” phrasings. He was very direct and unambiguous in informing his readers and followers what USC’s bowl matchup would be:

That seems fairly definitive. We’ll wait for the bowl selection show on Sunday to make it official. Let’s give you an early primer on Tulane’s season and this bowl game: