The Tulane Green Wave were rated highly by a football publication as they retool for the 2026 season.
With all of the noise surrounding Duke Blue Devils quarterback Darian Mensah shockingly enter the transfer portal, the college football world might forget that this exact situation happened to the Tulane Green Wave last season. Sure, it wasn’t the last day of the transfer portal – it was the first. And there were rumors of tampering taking place months before the season ended, with some questions about Mensah’s play in the final contests. He gave the Green Wave more time to find another starter, but it was a stunning move that showed how difficult it can be for Group of Five programs to compete.
If anything has been made clear by the transfer portal movement in this latest window that closed Friday, it’s that Power Four programs aren’t at all immune to the same decimation. But when Mensah left Tulane, it felt like the sport was on the verge of breaking and leaving G5 schools in the dust. The Green Wave kept their head coach, and it didn’t matter at all in that facet. They managed to reload, compete, and make the College Football Playoff anyway – and beat their former quarterback in the process. They were the fourth highest-ranked champions in the CFP final 12-team field, joining the Boise State Broncos who made the field last year. The Broncos were thought to be the G5 program to beat. That has changed, according to Football Scoop. The publication released their Year End Top 25, and Tulane came in at No. 3.
“Tulane has fully supplanted Boise State as the premier Group of 6 program in college football. The Green Wave played for the American championship for the fourth straight season, won it for the second time, and improved to 43-12 (31-5 vs. the AAC) since 2022. Oh, and they watched quarterback Darian Mensah take a bag from Duke, then beat him -- and the eventual ACC champions -- on the field in September. The Wave played in the College Football Playoff for the first time, and along the way set the gold standard in the new, and almost always awkward, dance of playing for the head coach who's taken another job,” Zach Barnett with Football Scoop wrote.
It’s hard to ignore the resume when spelled out like that. Many programs could have imploded when their star quarterback who they developed and started over veteran transfers left immediately after the season, for an NIL bag that they could never compete with. But they proved that they could still compete with the best, including against their former quarterback in the win over Duke. That only goes as far as goodwill for that season, and everything will have to start from scratch this next year.
This time, the Green Wave will have a new head coach in addition to a new quarterback. But what they have is a proven legacy and a winning culture that is hard to come by at such a premier level in the Group of Five. They’re one of three G5 teams to make the expanded 12-team field in the CFP, putting them in an elite recruiting category of being able to run it back. It goes to show that the perception of the program has benefited from that boost just as much. In college football, perception can often dictate reality.