Tulane Hires Will Hall As New Head Football Coach After Striking Out on Blake Baker
Will Hall is the new head coach of the Tulane Green Wave.
It has been quite the whirlwind for Tulane in the last week.
Head Coach Jon Sumrall took the Florida Gators job last Sunday to the surprise of nobody. He somehow worked for both Florida & Tulane last week signing a top 25 recruiting class for the Gators AND leading Tulane to an AAC Title AND College Football Playoff birth!
Coach Sumrall will also be coaching in the Playoffs when Tulane takes on Ole Miss on Saturday Dec 20th at 2:30pm in Oxford.
With Sumrall leaving for Gainesville, Tulane had to find a new coach.
LSU DC Blake Baker was the obvious top choice. He is a rising star in college football and has turned around a struggling LSU Defense back into a top 20 unit in two short years. Baker played college football at Tulane too.
But Baker ultimately decided to stay at LSU to call the defense for Lane Kiffin for over 3 million dollars a year. This was a big blow for Tulane and the Green Wave were scrambling after this miss.
Tulane then announced the hiring of Passing Game Coordinator Will Hall as the new head coach this morning. On the surface, it is hard to get fired up about this hire after missing on Baker & Billy Napier (James Madison).
Hall struggled badly as head coach of Southern Miss for multiple seasons before coming back to Tulane to join the offensive staff. (He was also the offensive coordinator for Willie Fritz at Tulane.)
For program continuity, the hiring makes sense. Hall knows the roster, culture and is a good offensive mind. And he will have FAR more resources at Tulane than he ever did in Hattiesburg.
This move easily could work out for Tulane but damn it is hard to get excited about this move. Willie Fritz & Jon Sumrall were both super elite coaches and led Tulane to multiple conference titles.
This is one of the best Group of 5 jobs in the country and it seemed like another big hire was coming.
Ultimately, time will tell on this hire. But the public reaction has been mixed at best so far. If Tulane continues to win conference titles, this will all be a moot point.