One of the first quarterbacks who Tulane Green Wave head coach Will Hall recruited shares his perspective on the progression of the program's culture, and how Hall fits atop it.
The Tulane Green Wave football team is still in a bit of a hiatus, at least in the public eye, until spring practice starts. They’ll keep trying to beat their offseason conditioning program, the Gauntlet, over the next few weeks. But until spring practice kicks off on March 9, there’s not much to do but hurry up and wait to observe the new era under head coach Will Hall. It’s worth looking back at the perspective of the first great quarterback Hall cultivated and developed with the Green Wave, Michael Pratt, who spoke about his time with Hall in an interview for the College Football Playoff pregame broadcast with the radio team.
As Tulane enters spring practice, they’ll conduct their third consecutive quarterback competition. Since Pratt graduated in 2023, the program hasn’t had their starter return for next season. That should make it harder to retain and acquire talent on offense. But the pitch for the program is in a different landscape at this stage. Pratt had a lot of talent around him, but a look back at the recruiting pitch for Pratt is nothing like what the program can say today, and Pratt credits former coach Willie Fritz laying that foundation over time.
“I remember the recruiting pitch when I was coming out of high school was going to bowl games,” Pratt said. “It was going 6-6 and getting to a bowl game. And that was huge for the program and the progression of I at the time.”
That recruiting process for Pratt was led by Hall, who Pratt spoke about for nearly two minutes straight.
“He was probably the person that I had the best connection with throughout my whole recruiting process,” Pratt said. “He did a phenomenal job. Awesome recruiter, but that's just because of who he is as a person. He's someone that everybody gravitates towards. People want to be around him. He's a natural leader. He treats everybody the same. He has great relationships, which is one of my things that I think is the most important in any form of leadership is creating those relationships.”
“I watched the video of them announcing it to the team and just seeing how fired up all the guys were, I think that really goes to show the relationships that he has with all those guys. He's been very tight knit with the program. In 2020, my freshman year, him and I, after that Memphis game, we're on the sideline freaking sitting there in tears when we knew he was going to Southern Miss.”
In today’s age of college football, the leader at the top has to be all-encompassing. The X&Os can largely be delegated. But relationships and culture setting will go really far, and Hall has a finger on the pulse on what clicks at Tulane. Pratt spoke a lot about a “progression,” and that was an interesting way to put it, because it feels at times like the Green Wave got something stuck under the gas pedal and were fine to launch forward at turbo speed with the momentum of winning. But it quietly has been building since 2020, when a lot of guys who were on the Cotton Bowl team joined the program in Hall’s recruiting class.
“He's been super integrated with the team throughout the years,” Pratt continued in December. “Him being back there [this year] has been really awesome to see. I think he's been a huge key to the development of the team, where we've come from, and where we've got to. And then talking about the culture, he knows all about it. That's one of the things that I think was really important in choosing a head coach, a guy that really understands the school, the city, everything that goes into it and has been a part of the progression. So just super stoked for him. I'm super stoked for our football team and the whole city of New Orleans. I think it's going to be awesome for him to continue to do that on a bigger scale at Tulane.”
In five seasons on the sidelines, there’s yet to be a relationship with a player and position coach that were only together one season that has seemingly left the same impression that Hall did on Pratt. But no two are more interconnected than offensive coordinator and quarterback. When Hall kicks off spring practice as new head coach, he’ll be looking to bring together largely a group of strangers out of the transfer portal. That’s where relationship building matters just as much, if not more, than the schemes on the field.