ARLINGTON, Texas — It was fourth down, the game on the line, and Michael Pratt was on the run. Here he was again.
In the midst of the madness Monday, the Tulane quarterback flashed back to last year, the Week 1 trip to Oklahoma. That was supposed to be a home game, but Hurricane Ida had disrupted everything. Trailing 40-35 on fourth down, Pratt moved to his right, ran forward and dived for the first-down line, but he was tackled a yard short by Lincoln Riley’s Sooners. Tulane would finish the season 2-10 to cap a miserable fall.
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Now, he and Tulane were trailing USC and the same opposing head coach 45-39 in the Cotton Bowl, and he scrambled to his left on fourth down to keep the Green Wave alive. It took 13 strides this time, and he needed all 13 at AT&T Stadium. He picked up the first down by 1 yard with 1:19 to play. Eight plays later, he found tight end Alex Bauman for the winning touchdown with seven seconds left.
Tulane 46, USC 45. One of the unlikeliest comebacks to cap the biggest turnaround in the history of the Football Bowl Subdivision. No team before had ever gone from two wins to 12 wins, as Tulane has now done. Over the past five years, FBS teams were 1-1,692 when trailing by at least 15 points with five minutes to play. Now, there are two that pulled it off.
“We dreamed about this for a long time,” Pratt said. “We flipped the switch from last year.”
It was everything we love about college football — everything we love about sports. Tulane, the small private school in New Orleans that quit the SEC nearly six decades ago, returned to a major bowl game for the first time in 83 years. And the Green Wave beat USC, one of the sport’s most historic programs, led by yet another Heisman Trophy winner in Caleb Williams.
𝘼𝙣 𝙪𝙣𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙫𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙖𝙥 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙖𝙣 𝙪𝙣𝙗𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙫𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚 𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙣 🏆@GreenWaveFB x @CottonBowlGame pic.twitter.com/53peRHd7ah
— The American (@American_Conf) January 3, 2023
Coach Willie Fritz, the 62-year-old former Division II player who began his coaching career in the high school and junior college ranks, beat one of the most prolific young coaches in the sport in Riley. Fritz and Riley first became head coaches at 33 years old. Riley’s first shot came at Oklahoma. Fritz’s came at Blinn junior college.
As the final play ended, Tulane players rushed the field. Others collapsed. Hands sat atop stunned heads. Fritz found his daughter Lainie, who was in tears. Tulane championship hats and shirts that had nearly been stored away, never to see the public light, came out with a quickness. The rainbow-colored confetti came down. Oh, so much confetti. Players made snow angels. A young girl stuffed as much as she could into her hat.
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Fritz has won everywhere he’s been, and he’s played for championships at the juco, Division II and FCS levels. When awarded the Cotton Bowl trophy, Fritz yelled out and made a double fist-pump.
“I was never one of those guys that thought about the future,” Fritz said when asked if he imagined this moment. “I always coach where my feet are.”
Those feet aren’t always on the ground, however. There’s a saying every Fritz player knows: “Way down in the valley.” It’s part of the song celebration Fritz leads after every victory, followed by a crowd surf on top of his players. He’s done it after every win since that first year at Blinn in 1993. He still looks like a 33-year-old when his feet nearly hit the ceiling.
2023 @CottonBowlGame Champs Wave Surf!! #RollWave 🌊 pic.twitter.com/9fKyWwg3w9
— Tulane Football (@GreenWaveFB) January 2, 2023
The Cotton Bowl also counts as one more reminder that the so-called Group of 5 can compete with the best and why an expanded College Football Playoff will finally give a fair shot to the conferences so often left out. The American Athletic Conference is now 3-4 in New Year’s Six bowls or CFP games against top Power 5 teams, with two one-score losses. USC was only a 2.5-point favorite, but no one could have predicted Monday’s finish. It’s why they play the games.
“It’s like Verne Lundquist, ‘In your life, have you ever seen anything like that?’” an elated AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said on the field after the comeback.
Aresco had a right to feel giddy, to puff his chest out once again. Leading the conference through its nine years, Aresco has stubbornly and outspokenly willed the league to its strong position. UCF’s consecutive undefeated regular seasons in 2017 and 2018 are major reasons CFP expansion is on its way. The AAC forced itself to the table by proving it deserved to be there. The AAC will lose UCF, Cincinnati and Houston to the Big 12 next year, and Aresco has tried not to publicly express ill will, but this Cotton Bowl win by an AAC team staying in the league provided extra pride.
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“It means a lot to us, no question,” Aresco said.
Fritz joked that this win was Tulane’s revenge for the 1932 Rose Bowl loss to USC. But the significance truly resonates for the many people of Tulane’s football past.
The win was for those who remembered the de-emphasis of athletics in the 1950s after three decades of top-level success. It was for those who were against the decision to leave the SEC in 1966, for those who voted to keep the program when it nearly disbanded in 1985. It was for the 1998 team that went undefeated in the first year of the BCS but didn’t get a top-10 bowl matchup against a major conference team. (Shaun King, the quarterback of that team, was in attendance Monday.) It was for those who voted to keep the program in Division I-A in 2003 and those who helped the program get through Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when every game was played away from home.
This Tulane program, these fans, have been put through the wringer. The piercing noise when officials ruled Tulane’s final play a touchdown after replay represented decades and decades of frustration finally set free.
The Tulane side of the stadium on the TD call. pic.twitter.com/2XFyTQPIGY
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) January 2, 2023
Athletic director Troy Dannen credited the foundation to the people who got Yulman Stadium built on campus in 2014.
“That allowed us to get a guy like Willie,” said Dannen, sporting the lucky throwback white hat and blue shoes he’d worn to every win this season. “That investment, when people had no vision for what could really happen here, to see it manifest itself in this way means everything to this institution, this city and our people.”
Tulane sold out a home game for the first time since 2014. Its licensing revenue went through the roof with this Cotton Bowl run. The size of the Fear The Wave collective quadrupled in size. Some Oklahoma fans, enjoying their former head coach’s defeat Monday, promised to chip money into Tulane’s collective.
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“This energized the students, the faculty, staff, alumni,” Tulane president Michael Fitts said. “They’ve been so enraptured with this team.”
This team. That’s ultimately what it was all about in the end. The largest turnaround in FBS history, with one of the wildest comebacks in the Cotton Bowl’s 87-year history. The overlooked players taking down the stars of Hollywood.
Green Wave running back Tyjae Spears idolized Reggie Bush while growing up as the second-youngest of nine children. In a performance reminiscent of Bush, against Bush’s Trojans, Spears had 205 rushing yards with four touchdowns, picking up 12.1 yards per carry. After the game, an introspective Spears reflected on growing up in difficult situations 45 minutes north of New Orleans.
“I’m from a place I’m trying to get out of, and I don’t want to go back to it,” he said.
The AAC Offensive Player of the Year and newly crowned Cotton Bowl Offensive MVP, Spears declared for the NFL on social media after the game.
The storybook ending was the power of belief. The belief a team can reach the mountaintop after a two-win season. The belief it’s never out of a game. The belief a team or individual can always get out of a bad situation.
“Coach Fritz took a real big chance on me coming out of high school,” Spears said at the podium. “I’ll forever appreciate him for that. I love you, Coach Fritz.”
“Love you too, buddy,” his coach responded.
(Photo of Willie Fritz, Dorian Williams and Tyjae Spears: Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
