Four National TV Games for Tulane? Four? You've Got to be Kidding...
The American Conference announced its early kickoff times and television designations for the 2026 football season, and Tulane has been slated for at least four nationally televised games. The full schedule will be released as Fall gets closer.
This blows us away. More on that in a bit.
First National Game set for September 19
Tulane plays its season opener at Duke on the ACC Network on September 5th at 2:30 p.m. CDT, then follows with an ESPN+ game at Yulman Stadium against South Alabama, the Green Wave will hit the national spotlight in Week 3 on Saturday, September 19th at 11:00 a.m. CDT when the Wave travel to Manhattan to take on Kansas State on ESPN2.
The Saturday, October 10th game at Army is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. CDT on the CBS Sports Network.
Then, on Friday, October 16th, ESPN comes to Uptown to telecast the Tulane-Memphis showdown. Kickoff is targeted for 6:30 p.m. CDT that Friday.
Two weeks later, the Green Wave will be Charlotte to challenge the 49ers. ESPN2 will be carrying that game live at 6:00 p.m. CDT on October 30th.
Depending on where Tulane is in the American Conference standings, the Wave's game on the Friday after Thanksgiving at South Florida could be telecast at either the 11:00 a.m. or 2:30 p.m. CST slot on Black Friday.
The American Conference championship game will be on ABC on Saturday, December 5th at 7:00 p.m. CST
On SI Tulane Analysis
This is a Tulane team that is fresh off its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance, a team that ranked in the top-20 at end of the 2025-26 season, the defending American Conference champions. And they only get four national television appearances? Although some would count ESPN+ as national TV, don't kid yourself. It's not.
Four?
You have got to be joshin'.
This is an embarrassment.
A case could be made for the Tulane-Duke game being on national TV. Same could be said for the Southern Miss contest on September 26th in Yulman. And the November 21st rematch between the Wave and North Texas in Uptown.
This TV scheduling is completely out of the hands of the Tulane administration. However, the American Conference does have a hand in deciding which games it will promote with the networks.
How the league only got the defending conference champion and the only American Conference team to ever make the college playoffs on the national television stage four times in 2026 is disconcerting.
The team that carried the league banner into the 12-team playoff deserves to have more than just four times.
Memphis is on the nationally televised slate at least six times and could be on seven.
Navy is on a minimum of seven times and could be eight.
East Carolina is on the national stage not less than six times and might be seven.
North Texas is on the boob-tube a half-dozen times. Yes, six.
None of those four teams were American Conference champions once the final whistle blew on December 5, 2025 in Yulman Stadium. Only one was: Tulane.
None of that quartet were in the College Football Playoffs when they began on the third week of December last year. One lucky guess as to who was. Go ahead, guess.
If the American Conference did not go to bat for its defending champion, they've got some explaining to do.
This is embarrassing.
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Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.