The 2025 Tulane Green Wave football team turned within to find greatness from the hardships they turned into an American Conference Championship title.
The 2025 Tulane Green Wave football team didn’t really show many parallels to the 2022 team – until the week of the American Conference Championship. The team that won the Cotton Bowl was comprised of nearly the same roster as the one that won two games the year prior. They believed in themselves while everyone thought they were delusional. This year’s team was burdened by the expectations that 12-2 team set, and it wasn’t clear whether they could surmount them. They are now heading to the College Football Playoff.
Unlike that 2022 team, this year’s had over 60 new players on the roster. They are led by a quarterback who showed up on campus a week before training camp versus a three-year starter. This Green Wave team was sloppier, and the sidelines in their two losses to Ole Miss and UTSA were coach-led.
Then head coach Jon Sumrall was announced as the next head coach of the Florida Gators. In 2022, the noise surrounding former coach Willie Fritz to the Georgia Tech Yellowjackets had truth to it. The captains called a player-led meeting to shut down the noise.
This time, the distractions that permeated the 2024 conference championship loss hit a critical breaking point when they were realized a week before the 2025 title game. Wide receiver Bryce Bohanon was in that room in 2022, as well as the one in February of that season when those same captains held a meeting with a PowerPoint presentation that ended with the American trophy on the final slide.
Bohanon watched those dreams then crumble in back-to-back title losses. Those ones also lacked player leadership on the sideline. Those seniors weren’t going to let that happen again. So Bohanon called a player-led meeting on Sunday after the news of Sumrall’s departure was announced. An injured Bohanon took the final kneel down to close out the program-defining 34-21 victory he sparked the fire for.
One of the questions that veteran leader Sam Howard was asked on Tuesday leading up to the game was how much they wanted to win this for their head coach. In an incredibly eloquent answer, he made it clear that this win was going to be for them, the players who fought to get there and who lost on the field last season. For all of Tulane.
That 2022 team felt like a player-led team of destiny. Anyone reading the coverage leading up to the matchup between Tulane and the North Texas Mean Green knew that the Green Wave were the decided underdogs. There was question of whether the offense could keep up with the top passing attack in the nation. There was little confidence that a defense that struggled in the secondary all year long would be able to stifle the Mean Green enough to give them a fighting chance.
Bulletin board material.
In that 2022 championship win, it felt like the UCF Knights never had a chance. From the moment the Green Wave got the ball following North Texas’ opening touchdown, that same feeling set in early on a rainy night in Yulman Stadium.
Despite a late comeback, Tulane punched the Mean Green in the mouth to start the contest and never let them forget it. It was a demoralizing feeling that the team hadn’t caused since the season opener against Northwestern. The defensive gameplan was a masterclass in rattling a freshman quarterback who hadn’t started prior to this year since he was 14, and who had never been under the daunting lights of Friday night.
One of the sayings Sumrall tells his team when he wants them to stay alert is to stay frosty. That bitter sting in West Point last season left frostbite in those veterans who weren’t going to allow that harsh cold to set in again. Those who didn’t experience that learned how quickly their dreams could slip away when they were embarrassed by the UTSA Roadrunners. That was the most valuable game of the season for this team who used that adversity to find greatness.
Good teams are coach-led. Great teams are player-led. From the pregame huddles to the final calls by Most Outstanding Player of the game, safety Jack Tchienchou, on the sideline that they were one final stop from being champions, this player-led team never looked back. That Cotton Bowl team set out to leave a legacy. This 2025 team is going to the College Football Playoff. That legacy of champions will be etched in Tulane history.