Tulane Must Change Underdog Perception With Win at Army

The Tulane Green Wave enter this weekend against the Army Black Knights as an underdog according to the sports books, which is not a great sign considering that the Black Knights are coming off a loss.

Despite losing 31-29 to the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs in Week 5, DraftKings has Army as a 3.5-point favorite against the Green Wave.

Now, there’s probably a bump going on with the Black Knights being at home, but it says a lot about how the nation views Tulane four games into the season.

When a team coming off a loss gets a favorable bump over the team on a bye, things need to be examined.

Both teams are at 2-2 to start the season. Army has beat Bryan University and the Temple Owls in conference play. They lost to the South Florida Bulls and the Bulldogs this past weekend.

In comparison, the Green Wave beat the South Alabama Jaguars and Southern Miss Golden Eagles at home but lost both Power Four matchups to the Duke Blue Devils and Kansas State Wildcats on the road.

Their resume should, on its face, edge out a team with a G6 win and FCS win with both losses to G6 opponents.

That means that Tulane needs to look in the mirror a bit here and know that a win this weekend needs to be a convincing one.

The Green Wave basically start their season now. In terms of end of season goals, the American Conference title game is the expectation for this program at this point.

So, they frankly could beat every team by a point and still get there. That’s sort of what the Wave did in 2023.

In conference play that year, Tulane beat the UAB Blazers 35-23, the Memphis Tigers 31-21, the North Texas Mean Green 35-28, the Rice Owls 30-28, the ECU Pirates 13-10, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane 24-22, the FAU Owls 24-8, and the UTSA Road Runners 26-19.

They averaged beating each team by slightly more than a touchdown in conference play, and that’s with the FAU win skewing things a bit – taking that outlier out, they averaged 6.14 points in their margin of victory.

No one felt great watching that season play out, and while they made it to the title game, they lost handily to the SMU Mustangs 26-14. That game was certainly colored by the mid-game announcement that Willie Fritz was leaving, but that season felt like they were playing on borrowed time the entire time.

That won’t do much good for the Green Wave to do the same this year.

They have an opportunity now.

The college football nation has waned on them, and they need their first win as the underdogs.