The Tulane Green Wave have reportedly settled in on their next head coach to replace Jon Sumrall, and will be promoting current passing game coordinator and former offensive coordinator Will Hall.
The Tulane Green Wave have settled on their next head coach according to reports. Pete Thamel of ESPN reported Monday morning that the Green Wave are promoting the successor to Jon Sumrall from within, and that current passing game coordinator Will Hall will be the team’s next coach. Hall isn’t the splashy hire, nor is he the consensus favorite by fans. That sentiment ends once you start asking former players from the program, with those there on Friday for the 2025 American Championship Game heavily backing Hall.
Hall is certainly the best option for promoting continuity and keeping the most staff and players from this year’s championship team. It’s also hard not to feel like this coaching search went a bit wrong, whether or not Hall is actually the best fit. It seemed like the program went all in on LSU Tigers defensive coordinator Blake Baker, but didn’t actually close the deal, and allowed a lot of options to get signed elsewhere in the meantime. But perhaps Hall was the second choice behind Baker all along, and this all just looks a bit worse due to those optics.
Hall also wasn’t successful at his last head coaching stop, much unlike the punch to the Sun Belt Sumrall brought. Hall was the Southern Miss Golden Eagles head coach from 2021 to 2024 and went 14-30 before being fired and finding his way onto Sumrall’s staff as passing game coordinator last season. Prior to that, he was the offensive coordinator responsible for cultivating and developing great Green Wave quarterback Michael Pratt, and he was Pratt’s favorite coordinator by a mile when asked. Hall also was one of two head coaches to beat Tulane the year they won the Cotton Bowl.
Prior to that, Hall boasted a 56-20 record at the Division II level as head coach at West Alabama and West Georgia. He is unproven at the Group of Five level as a successful head coach thus far, but he also hasn’t had the level of resources, talent, or investment that the Green Wave program currently offers.
He also is one of the few staff members who really understands the culture that has made Tulane great over the last five seasons under the last two coaches, Sumrall and Willie Fritz. He built two of the highest scoring offenses in program history under Fritz. The only time that side of the ball was more prolific in scoring was in 1998 when they went 12-0 and the year they won the Cotton Bowl in 2022.
So, perhaps this will be the right fit with the requisite resources, knowledge of the recruiting area, and deep understanding of the winning culture that has seen the Green Wave go 43-12 since the start of 2022. They feel most poised to continue that dominance under Will Hall.