Tulane's Patrick Durkin Earns Freshman All-American Honors
In this story:
Tulane redshirt freshman kicker Patrick Durkin has been named a First Team Freshman All-American by The Athletic.
Durkin, in his second year at Tulane, was the team’s primary kicker in all 13 games. On the season he is 24-for-27 on field goals and 40-for-41 on extra points. He is 7-for-9 from 40+ including four made kicks of 50+ with a long of 52. The 24 made field goals from Durkin this year are the most in school history for a single season and rank him sixth nationally. His 112 points leads the conference, is the most-ever for a kicker in school history and tied for the fifth-most for any player overall in the school record book. He also had 66 touchbacks on 77 kickoffs this season (85.7 percent). He was previously a First Team All-Conference selection for the first time in his career, the conference’s Special Teams Player of the Year and a Third Team All-Conference selection by the Pro Football & Sports Network. Durkin also was named the league’s Special Teams Player of the Week three times throughout the campaign (Sept. 1, Oct. 13 and Nov. 24).
After winning the American Conference Championship on Friday night, Dec. 5, for the second time in four seasons, the No. 11 seeded Tulane football team (11-2) is College Football Playoff (CFP) bound for the first time in school history as the program 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,
Besides being the first-ever playoff appearance, the Green Wave is 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.
Portions Courtesy 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.