Four-straight conference championship appearances, two American Conference titles, two AP Top 20 finishes, one Cotton Bowl victory, and one College Football Playoff appearance — all in a four-year span.
Tulane completed college football’s most statistically remarkable turnaround in 2022, going from 2-10 to 12-2, and the program has refused to look back. The coaches change, the players change, but the Green Wave continue withstand dramatic personnel turnover and win ballgames.
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The players attribute the sustained success to a player-led culture.
“We went to the championship with (Willie) Fritz. He took guys. We went to the championship with (Jon) Sumrall. He took guys,” strong safety Jack Tchienchou said. “At the end of the day, the only thing that remained the same was the players. This team is only going to go as far as the players let it. I think we’re doing the right things and taking the steps to where it’s a player-led team, it’s serious, and we’re truly playing for each other.”
Tulane’s player-led culture is being tested more than ever. Only five primary starters return from last season’s College Football Playoff team return, placing increased responsibility on players like Tchienchou — a 2025 First Team All-American Conference selection — to be the new standard bearers of the program. These veteran leaders have tasked themselves with a mission of taking the Green Wave to their fifth-straight conference championship game and second-straight CFP bid.
“We’re running all the meetings, we’re running our own walkthroughs, when it comes to coaching, if I see a guy mess up, I’m not gonna say wait for coach to say anything. I’m gonna step up and tell them,” Tchienchou said. “It’s throughout all positions. Chris does it for the linebackers, I do it for the DBs, we got guys doing it for the d-line like Ed Smith. We have the age and experience to be able to coach each other up on things. You miss something, you’re late to something, you gotta get dealt with. There’s no fight back, but it’s pretty seamless.”
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – NOVEMBER 29: Safety Jack Tchienchou #1 of the Tulane Green Wave reacts during the first half of a game against the Charlotte 49ers at Yulman Stadium on November 29, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images) | Getty Images
The player-led culture at Tulane became influential to the point where the players effectively selected the program’s next head coach. When 2025 American Conference championship-winning head coach Jon Sumrall departed for Florida following the CFP First Round matchup at Ole Miss, the players definitively voiced their support for Will Hall, who served as Tulane’s passing game coordinator last fall.
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“It kind of all started with the players,” Hall said. “The players wanted it, and they got the ball rolling on it, and they created the momentum. Then we had the interview process which went well. Then he had another interview. It just kind of felt it was meant to be. I don’t know if there’s a better way to get a job than that. I’m in a situation where I know the place, and then the players — there’s automatic buy-in from the day you take the job because they’re the reason you got the job. It was a unique deal.”
Player empowerment is only effective if there is trust between a head coach and the players. Hall understands that philosophy, which was a defining trait allowing him to win his roster’s support.
“People just buy into a culture,” outside linebacker Chris Rodgers said. “Willie Fritz, I heard all about him. People bought in to him. Coach Sumrall, people bought into his program. Coach Hall, we’re buying into this program. We know if we just buy in, we’ll all be straight.”
Hall’s history with the program is well-documented. He served as offensive coordinator under Willie Fritz in 2019 and 2020 when Tulane was in the early stages of evolving from a perennial cellar dweller to a consistent bowl team. Hall then returned for the 2025 season as part of Jon Sumrall’s staff, playing a role in the Green Wave’s first-ever College Football Playoff berth. Across different staffs, he observed a program that emphasizes leadership and remains unflappable through coaching changes, player graduations, and transfer portal losses.
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“It started with Coach Fritz. Coach Sumrall kept it going,” Hall said. “Now we recruit that type of young man. We’ve had such great leadership here starting with Michael Pratt, Nick Anderson, and Tyjae Spears. Those guys passed down to Sam Howard and those guys and now to this group with Jack and Chris. We develop leaders, and we do a great job of putting them in positions where they have to lead. We have practices where coaches aren’t allowed to be out there and the players have to do it.”
While Hall played an integral part in Tulane’s initial rise and its journey to the CFP, he faced a major obstacle in between stints in New Orleans. Hall was hired as the head coach of Southern Miss prior to the 2021 season and posted a 14-30 overall record before his midseason firing in October 2024. Hall, a highly-successful Division II coach prior to his Southern Miss stint, reflected on what went awry in Hattiesburg, MS.
“As a young head coach we were really successful, and then we get to Southern Miss and we win a bowl game in year two — it was the only bowl game Southern Miss has won in quite some time — and maybe you get the feeling that you can’t fail. Maybe you’ve got the magic touch,” Hall said. “But then NIL hit, the portal hit, and I made some decisions that weren’t good with how we changed the direction of the program through those changes. And I learned a lot from it. I’m way better from having gone through it.”
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – DECEMBER 5: Head coach Jon Sumrall, left, of the Tulane Green Wave talks with assistant coach Will Hall, right, during the 2025 American Conference Football Championship against the North Texas Mean Green at Yulman Stadium on December 5, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Hall was announced as Tulane’s head football coach on Monday, December 8, 2025. He will replace Sumrall when he departs after Tulane’s current playoff run for the head coaching position at Florida. (Photo by Michael DeMocker/Getty Images) | Getty Images
Hall says his top priority at Tulane is quite simple. He is a football coach and nothing more.
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“I have to coach,” Hall said. “I’ve always coached. I coach on offense. I coach on special teams. I coach tackling. When it became apparent we were gonna have to raise money, I went to raising money full-time and quit coaching. I became a CEO head coach. I am not a CEO head coach. I have to be a coach, and I will coach every day for the rest of the time the good Lord gives me to do it.”
Hall also believes Tulane is already positioned well from a fundraising standpoint because such fundraising is what built the Green Wave into an American Conference dynasty.
“It was created through hiring a great coach who had a great plan and recruited the right type of people,” Hall said. “When the portal and NIL hit, Tulane was on the forefront of it. We were resourcing and putting financially into the program to give us a leg up. We are resourced to win. You’ve gotta be resourced nowadays to win, and we are.”
Fundraisers raise money. Coaches coach. Players play — and at Tulane, they also lead. That’s the ecosystem transformed Tulane into the American Conference’s perennial power in the 2020s. The players believe sustaining this philosophy through the Will Hall era is the necessary ingredient to keep the Wave rolling.
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“It’s all about setting the standard,” Tchienchou said. “We’ve seen the ropes. We know what it takes. Getting the guys to fall in line and buy in is very important. The standard is the standard — four-straight conference championships. We don’t plan on missing that.”
