Strappin' on the Pads, Tulane Spring Football Day 4
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Our exclusive coverage of Tulane Spring Football continues. Look for our stories to be published at 4:00 p.m. on the afternoon of each day of practice.
Today, Day 4 and it was full pads for the first time this Spring, or as coach Will Hall calls it, “real football.”
Some Observations
Former LSU head coach Ed Orgeron has been a mainstay at practices these days. Today he was glad-handing everybody imaginable who was coming into practice. Over three dozen possible future Greenies were in attendance as they were checking out essentially what practice looks like from their point of view. One Tulane staffer described this as akin to the amount of kids that would come on a game day visit with dozens of parents in the stands. Coach O took the time to take pictures with various high school athletes, doing the same with any parents who wanted to do so. O stayed around for almost the entire practice, roaming the sidelines, taking photos and generally enjoying the atmosphere of spring football.
Full pads means a different field but not a lot of hard hits. Yet. There were zebras on site. Of course we mean officials. They were calling penalties, field goals good or not good and practicing just like the Tulane football players were. An American Conference official was there to observe the officials and talked with some of them during the practice sessions.
During stretching exercises early on, the offensive teammates were on one sideline, defense was on the other sideline and then they would run toward the middle of the field. When they met in the middle some would just bump and say hello and greet and high five. Good mixture of competitiveness and camaraderie
Instead of all quarterbacks wearing red today only Kadin Semonza and Zeon Chriss-Gremillion were wearing the “don’t hit me” jerseys.
Our Interviews Today
Today, in our exclusive On SI Tulane Interviews, we caught up with head coach Will Hall, offensive coordinator Russ Calloway, and a pair of offensive players who are recovering from injury: New Orleans' own Garrett Mmahat in his senior season as a wide receiver at Tulane and graduate student Ty Thompson who lines up at tight end.
Kicking game looked about the same except in full pads this time. One of the guys expected to be competing as kicker this coming year, Saint Martin's Cooper Helmke has not dressed out as of yet still recovering from an injury. He was in shirts and shorts.
The Green Wave will not practice again until Tuesday morning. Of course, we'll have complete coverage coming your way at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 17th. We'll give you our observations and interviews.
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.