Tulane Football Receives High Ranking from Popular Preview Magazine

The Tulane Green Wave football team was highly regarded in one popular college football magazine’s conference preview.

Tulane Green Wave coach Jon Sumrall claps hands at play in black hat grey jacket. | Credit: Parker Waters - Tulane Athletics

The Tulane Green Wave are on a break for summer, at least from two-a-day practices and digesting game plans every day.

With summer break, that also means that college football preview magazines are starting to roll out previews and projecting what each team will do for the 2025 season, with the first games now less than 100 days away.

The Green Wave are coming off a 9-5 2024 season during which they reached the American Athletic Conference title game and made a trip to the Gasparilla Bowl.

What Did Lindy’s Magazine Project for Tulane Football in 2025?

Lindy’s Sports recently published its 2025 season preview, including a preview of the AAC. The good news for Tulane fans is that the magazine believes it can be league contenders once again.

Lindy’s picked Navy to win the league title but had Tulane in second place. That would mean another AAC title game appearance for the Green Wave, which would be their fourth straight. It would also mean another trip to a service academy for a conference title game in early December.

The Green Wave went to Army West Point for last year’s AAC title game and lost, 35-14.

The magazine paid particular attention of the work that head coach Jon Sumrall and his staff did in the transfer portal this offseason.

“Several transfers will keep the Green Wave in contention,” according to Lindy’s.

Notably, Tulane had turnover at quarterback. Sumrall named redshirt freshman Darian Mensah the starter just before the season opener last year and he excelled, helping the Green Wave back to the AAC title game. He also helped himself to a transfer to Duke, which included an NIL deal that many reported was in the millions.

After the departure of T.J. Finley during spring football, the quarterback race is down to transfers Brendan Sullivan (Iowa), Kadin Semonza (Ball State) or Donovan Leary (Illinois), with Sullivan transferring in after the spring game in April. The race for the job is expected to bleed well into fall workouts.

Lindy’s is also high on the Green Wave defense, even though the unit lost eight starters from a season ago. The reason, in part, is transfer defensive tackle Santana Hopper, who came in from Appalachian State) and could anchor the front of Tulane’s defense.

The Green Wave open the season on Aug. 30 at home against Northwestern, one of three non-conference games against power conference teams. Tulane hosts Duke on Sept. 13 and then travels to Ole Miss the following weekend.