Tulane Football Jumps in Both Polls
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The Tulane football team is nationally ranked for the fourth consecutive week as the program comes at No. 17 in the Associated Press (AP) Poll and No. 18 in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll as was announced on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 7.
The program moved up after being ranked at No. 21 in both the AP and in the Coaches’ Poll last week, Nov. 23. The team is also ranked at No. 20 in the College Football Playoffs rankings that was released on Dec. 2.
AP & USA Today Upward Movement for the Greenies
The No. 17 Green Wave totaled 521 points in the final AP poll before the start of the College Football Playoffs. Tulane is one of three teams in the American to be ranked this week as Navy is No. 22 while North Texas checks in at No. 23.
Tulane also garnered enough points (448) to be ranked in the top 25 in the Coaches’ Poll. The program plus Navy (No. 25) are the American Conference representatives in the poll.
CFP On the Horizon for Tulane
After winning the American Conference Championship on Friday night, Dec. 5, for the second time in four seasons, the No. 20 Tulane football team (11-2) is playoff bound for the first time in school history as the program is seeded No. 11 and will faceoff with No. 6 seed Ole Miss (11-1) in Oxford, Miss at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Saturday, Dec. 20, at 2:30 p.m. in a game that will be shown on TNT, the College Football Playoff Committee announced on Sunday morning.
Besides being the first-ever playoff appearance, the Green Wave are also the first team to ever make the playoffs from the state of Louisiana in the 12-team format.
The Green Wave qualified for the CFP by being the fourth-highest ranked conference champion. The winner will go on to face No. 3 Georgia (12-1) in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1 at 7 p.m.
Ole Miss and Tulane met earlier this season with the Rebels earning the 45-10 victory on Sept. 20.
The team has started the 2025 season with 11 wins in the first 13 games including a pair of wins over Power 4 opponents in the regular season for the first time since 1988. The 34-21 victory over North Texas on Dec. 5 secured Tulane the program’s second conference title in the last four seasons.
Portions courtesy of Tulane Athletics
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.