The Tulane Green Wave football team is entering a new era under head coach Will Hall, but they managed to retain a solid core with his recruiting efforts.
The Tulane Green Wave football team will kick off spring practice this March with their third head coach in four seasons as head coach Will Hall assumes the reins of the program. There will be a lot of new faces, but also a considerable number of familiar ones as Hall and his coaching staff was impressively able to retain top talent like running back Jamauri McClure, linebacker Chris Rodgers, and safety Jack Tchienchou. With Hall’s extensive time at Tulane under those coaches that preceded him, Willie Fritz and Jon Sumrall, he has a focused recruiting strategy that will be fully his own this time.
Hall spoke with local news station WGNO about the realities of today’s college football regarding the transfer portal and NIL. One of the questions for Group of Five programs at this stage is their willingness to play the game with the chips they have. For the programs that reach the top of G5 success – and the Green Wave certainly did last season – there’s really only one reality for them. They’ll continually lose guys to the transfer portal who are able to get big paydays elsewhere with Power Four resources that Tulane can’t entirely compete with.
“We’re always going to lose our older guys to the portal,” Hall said. “That’s part of it. You know, what we’re trying to do is, who is the next Alex Bauman? Who is the next Darian Mensah? Who’s the next Rayshawn Pleasant? Who’s the next Shadre Hurst? Come here. Play three years. Get a Tulane degree that will set you up for life, and then leave and go to the NFL or leave and one of these schools that pay players $1 million or $ 2 million a year will pay you.”
Now, Mensah was an intriguing inclusion in that one, as he only had one season as a starter and was with the program for two seasons. However, he led Tulane to one of their four consecutive American Conference Championship appearances. Hall was also discussing quarterbacks with WGNO, so the Mensah nod could speak to intrigue about the young guys in that room as the team enters a third consecutive quarterback competition. But what was really interesting was the last recruiting point – either go to the NFL or go get your payday elsewhere after giving the program a few years.
That’s a really sage way to go about the NIL era of the sport, and one that could endear guys to stick around for perhaps one more year or two with the knowledge of their head coach’s understanding of the reality of the sport, but also his clear interest in developing them for as long as possible.
For Hall, he will look to cultivate that core group of returnees, in addition to a recruiting class that has 28 transfer portal additions and nearly 20 high school recruits the program hopes to recruit, retain, and develop. The portal guys are headlined by a majority group who has at least two years of college experience, hopefully bringing over some leadership and experience to the locker room.