Familiar tides are returning to Tulane University.

As Tulane makes its way to its fourth consecutive conference championship on Friday, football head coach Jon Sumrall is spending his final days in New Orleans leading the Green Wave before transitioning to the University of Florida.

Tulane got its first taste of national football success in recent years when it won the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic in 2023, its first major bowl win since the 1935 Sugar Bowl. 

Now, the Green Wave returns to the American Conference title stage, taking on the University of North Texas on Friday at Yulman Stadium, showing that the momentum isn’t stopping.

“The standard and expectations have now been set as to what people want Tulane football to be,” Tulane athletics director of broadcasting Corey Gloor said. “It’s got to be the right people in place, not just the Tulane football program, not just Tulane athletics, but the synergy across the campus that is able to keep this moving forward the way we have seen the last four years.”

“This is an established program now,” said Todd Graffagnini, who has worked at Tulane since 1994 as the radio play-by-play announcer and now serves as the radio voice for the New Orleans Pelicans. “I thought those words would never be uttered, but that is the reality, and we’re a national brand now.”

But the journey wasn’t easy this season.

The team started the season with a roster of 60 new players, a level of turnover rarely seen before in college football. Tulane also faced one of the most challenging non-conference schedules in the nation, facing down Power Four opponents Northwestern University, Duke University and the University of Mississippi.

“It’s been another impressive year to have 60 new players on this roster and to win 10 games and be back in the American Championship game, that’s just very challenging to do in the current day and age of college football,” Gloor said.

Friday’s showdown against the UNT Mean Green has massive implications for Tulane’s football program.

“You can make a legitimate argument that the game against North Texas is the biggest football game in the history of Tulane University, because of the ramifications,” Graffagnini said. “To have a hint at winning a national championship in football, if you even get in the tournament, you have a chance to win the national championship.”

Sumrall leaving for Florida Gators

This will not be a typical conference championship game for Tulane, with the matchup unfolding in the middle of a high-profile coaching change.

After leading the Green Wave for two seasons, Sumrall announced on Sunday that he was heading to Gainesville, Florida to be the new head coach for the Florida Gators.

“It’s bittersweet,” Sumrall said at a press conference on Monday. “I love the place at Tulane. I love the city of New Orleans. I love the team and our players, man, I love them, like freaking love them. Leaving is hard when you’ve invested in the people, and you care so much about the place.”

Sumrall will coach the Green Wave on Friday and continue coaching if the team advances to the College Football Playoffs. UNT head coach Eric Morris is also leaving his team for Oklahoma State University next season but will continue to coach on Friday.

“I really admire what Jon and Eric are doing, because I know the two of them really well, and I know this was table stakes for them to finish out their seasons with their student athletes and finish the job; you don’t often see that,” Tim Pernetti, commissioner of the American Conference, said at the press conference. “It speaks to the administrations, you have to have maturity about these situations.”

Athletic director David Harris said it was an “obvious decision” to allow Sumrall to continue to coach at a press conference on Sunday.

“I’m very honored and privileged that Tulane, given the circumstances we’re in, is allowing me to coach in the game and through this experience with our players, because when you have a chance to pursue a championship, man, there’s nothing like it,” Sumrall said.

Sumrall and Morris continuing to coach into the conference championship comes in sharp contrast to Ole Miss, where athletic director Keith Carter did not allow former coach Lane Kiffin to finish the season after he accepted the job at Louisiana State University. Kiffin’s move to LSU sparked national controversy, with some commentators labeling him as a “permanent villain” for leaving as Ole Miss makes a run for the playoffs.

“It’s just the way college football is, you go to one college, and you do a great job, and then you get promoted,” said Steve Barrios, a former Tulane football player who has been doing its play-by-play radio for 43 years. “It’s just like being in the corporate world, you do a good job, you get a promotion. The same thing happens with coaches and in football.”

Sumrall said the situation reflects a broader issue in college football, where coaching decisions for the next season often collide with the final weeks of the current one.

“The timing of when coaches have to make decisions about what they’re going to coach in 2026 is really kind of choppy and doesn’t line up with how you finish 2025,” Sumrall said. “I’m not a big fan of the calendar.”

Sumrall is one of three head coaches in the American Conference going to the Southeastern Conference next season, with University of South Florida’s Alex Golesh going to Auburn University and University of Memphis’s Ryan Silverfield to the University of Arkansas.

“People are viewing the American [Conference] as a place that has a lot of talent in the coaching ranks,” Pernetti said. “There’s more talent in this league than there is in any other league.”

Keeping Green Waves flowing forward

The stability of Tulane’s football boom has become a central theme as the program plans for its next chapter.

“No one man is bigger than what a program is and how a program is constructed,” Corey Gloor said. “The fact that Jon Sumrall was able to come in and take what was built prior to him and keep it going, that speaks to what this shift has been around Tulane athletics.”

Barrios, who played football for Tulane in 1969, said that Tulane’s football success has been missing a key component over the decades: consistency.

“We’ve had good teams and outstanding players, but not really consistently,” Barrios said. “Coach Fritz changed that, and Coach Sumrall has really continued that change and the winning culture, which has made it more attractive for coaches to want to come.”

The next challenge for Tulane will be maintaining momentum as coaches come and go.

“Tulane football is bigger than a head coach,” Sumrall said. “It’s bigger than Willie Fritz, it’s bigger than me, and it’s bigger than who the next guy will be. It’s about the players. I couldn’t be more thrilled to get a chance to coach these guys in a conference championship game and see them pursue something that’s very special.”

Friday championship game

The championship game on Friday will take the winner to the playoffs against the University of Oregon.

“This is a higher profile championship game than the American’s had in the past, and certainly it’s one of the highest profile this year in all the championship games,” Pernetti said.

With both Sumrall and Morris set to move to new programs next season, Friday’s game takes place under unusual circumstances.

“We’ve been able to confide in each other over the course of the last month or so because not a ton of people really know what we’re going through and how hard some of this stuff is and how hard the decisions are,” Morris said at the Monday press conference. “Ultimately, it’s really cool that we’re in the same position right now and that we’re both still able to lead these teams that have fought so hard for us.”

Weather forecasts indicate possible rain during the game, but Sumrall says that won’t stop the Green Wave.

“It looks like there might be some rain, I hope it’s a monsoon, it might help us,” Sumrall said. “The Green Wave would play better if it’s wet.”

The game won’t be easy. UNT sits at the top of the American Conference and holds one of the most aggressive offenses in the league.

“North Texas is going to be really, really tough, but I feel a whole lot better about playing them at Yulman Stadium than I would if we had to go to Denton,” Graffagnini said. “The crowd’s going to be great, let’s go get them.”

Despite the potential for rain, Sumrall wants students and fans to show up and bring energy to his second and final Tulane conference championship. 

“I was going to talk to President Fitts and see if we could cancel classes all day Friday and let them just get absolutely hammered and show up and bring a lot of chaos to the game,” Sumrall said at a press conference after the win against the University of North Carolina at Charlotte on Sunday.