NEW ORLEANS—In one of the biggest accomplishments of his life, Angus Lind convinced a group of LSU fans in the spring of 2002 to help save Tulane football. Dozens of folks, some even wearing the purple-and-gold gear of Tulane’s in-state rival, stood along St. Charles Avenue holding signs that read, “Honk if you love Tulane!”
“Twenty years later, who’d a thunk it?” says Lind, a 78-year-old longtime Green Wave supporter and a former sportswriter for . “Now, people are talking crazy talk about us going to a big bowl game!”
On the 20-year anniversary of Tulane’s attempt to completely shutter its football program or, at the very least, demote it to Division III, the No. 17 Green Wave is having one of its best seasons in the modern era of college football.
Tulane is 8–1, the highest-ranked team from the Group of 5 and leading the American Athletic Conference. The team won a game at Kansas State, is barreling toward its first appearance in the league title game and, with a win there, could very well secure a trip to its first major bowl since 1939.
It is a stunning and rare accomplishment for this small academic institution nestled among the oak trees of New Orleans’s Uptown neighborhood. For decades now overshadowed by both the city in which it resides and the SEC powerhouse to its north, Tulane’s outburst this season is even more shocking when considering its past—both recent and old.
The Green Wave is in the midst of one of the biggest one-year turnarounds in college football history—it went 2–10 last season—and has hit the eight-win mark for just the third time in the last 42 years. The program has survived cataclysmic natural disasters and two administrative attempts to shut down football within the last half-century.
If that’s not enough, the team fights attendance issues with a base of mostly out-of-state alums, is still chided for its decision to leave the SEC nearly 60 years ago and has strict admission requirements in the age of the transfer portal.
“It takes a unique bird to have success here,” says Troy Dannen, in his seventh year as athletic director.
“Let me tell you historically how bad it is,” Dannen continues. “The football coach is the first coach to have played in more than one bowl game and the basketball coach here has bonuses in his contract for winning six league games.”
On Saturday afternoon, the Green Wave, 5–0 in the American, hosts No. 22 UCF (7–2, 5–1) in a historic affair. It will be the first Tulane home game pitting ranked teams since 1949, when No. 13 LSU beat the SEC champion, 10th-ranked Green Wave 21–0 in an upset that, in many ways, began the steady decline of the football program.
Lind, then 5-years old, attended that game with his father Angus Sr., who earned two free tickets by selling season tickets for Tulane from a wooden booth near the university’s campus.
The 1949 loss to rival LSU squashed Tulane’s trip to the Sugar Bowl and began the university administration’s attempt to downsize football. The school proceeded to stop offering the allotted number of NCAA scholarships, slash coaching salaries and require athletes to take more rigorous courses. Tulane left the SEC 16 years later, was a single vote away from disbanding football in the mid 1980s before shutting down its basketball program for five years over a points-shaving scandal.
“Tulane has got some good history, along with some really bad history,” Lind says. “There’s a lot of excitement now around here. It’s special. Here I am, 78 years old and might be going to a big bowl game!”
