NCAA Football Tulane Football

Former USC, Arizona, Tulane and Missouri coach Larry Smith died Monday, succumbing to leukemia and lymphoma.

Smith coached for the greater part of two decades, compiling a 143-126-7 (.531) career record between 1976 and 2000. He is fondly remembered at Arizona for starting the first five of a ten-game win streak against rival Arizona State.

He also coached USC to within two games of the national championship in 1988 before falling to Notre Dame in the season finale and Michigan in the Rose Bowl. The Trojans finished with a 10-2 record that year.

Smith left football after the 2000 season, retiring to Arizona. He spent the last two years as an analyst for an Arizona television station.

Here's a nice moment from the weekend: Tulane tailback Matt Forte has crossed the 2,000 yard threshold this season. Forte entered Saturday with 1813 rushing yards and added another 195 today against Rice for good measure. That leaves Forte with 2,008 yards. For good measure, five touchdowns were among those 39 carries.

Forte was lightly recruited out of high school, with Tulane his only I-A offer. He's made a lot of people look foolish in notching 4,146 yards and counting over his career.

Forte may not be the only back to notch 2,000 yards this year, as UCF's Kevin Smith has 1947 yards after an impressive 179 yard, three-touchdown performance of his own today against SMU.

It's a passing era in college football, but the days of the 2,000 yard back aren't dead yet. Update: Forte is just the 12th back in D-I history to surpass the 2,000 yard mark, and the first since 2004.

Tulane coach Bob Toledo is known for his offense, but the wizardry and magic is with his defense this morning. The Green Wave defense has harassed LSU quarterback Matt Flynn, shut down the Tigers' run, and recorded a safety.

Maybe it's the goofy purple and white uniforms. Maybe it's the energy of the Superdome. Whatever you want to ascribe to things, Tulane barely trails against a worried LSU team at half. LSU is a 41-point favorite. 41 points!

We know how these budding fairytale games tend to go: disappointment. Well at least for a half, Tulane is embarrassing the mighty Tigers.

Not that I'm a coach, but if I'm LSU I'd you know, run the ball in the second half. And play Ryan Perilloux as Matt Flynn looks awful so far. Those tiny adjustments tend to lead to big things for heavily favored teams.

Says the New Orleans Police Department ...

New Orleans police arrested Tulane University football player Ray Boudreaux on Friday morning in connection with a stabbing on Bourbon Street last weekend that left five people wounded, including a man who remains in critical condition at University Hospital. [snip]

The stabbing took place Sunday just before 6 a.m., after two groups of people were ejected for fighting from the Utopia nightclub, Narcisse said. Boudreaux was with one other man, while the other group was four men and a woman.

After the fight spilled out onto the street, Boudreaux pulled a knife and began stabbing the five people in the opposing group, police said. The stabbing was captured in a surveillance camera videotape that police released on Wednesday.

It gets better (cough). Boudreaux is an honor roll student and police are struggling to find a reason behind the stabbings.

Police have found no motive for the violent altercation.

"We talked to both sides; both gave us different stories about what precipitated the fight," Narcisse said, adding that the people involved have been pointing fingers at each other.

That's definitely what gets me in a mood to stab people. Gosh, those pesky finger-pointers really deserve it, don't they?

After Michael Henig did his best to earn MVP honors for LSU in a 45 point loss last weekend, Mississippi State turned their attention to the Green Wave. The Bulldogs have faced Tulane nearly 60 times, but in recent years Tulane's given MSU a bit of a fight. So much so that Rick Dickson, Tulane's Athletic Director, thinks the teams are pretty much even:

"I think there's a lot of good in it," Dickson said. "I think we're dead even after four and at the end of the day we could both probably say if we play 10 times and were dead even we'd both be OK with that."

While the disturbing part of this statement for most SEC teams would be the fact that they were just equated to Tulane, Travis from Hail Dear 'Ole State sees a deeper issue:

[I]t does sum up what Bulldog fans have long suspected about Templeton. Being "okay" with splitting a ten game series does not show the commitment to excellence one would expect from an SEC athletic director.

There's no denying that taking the Bulldogs even as far as the top half of the SEC West is a tall order, but there's also been little in the way of progress in quite some time. It's not a stretch to distribute some of the blame for long-term mediocrity to the Athletic Director.

Vegas favors State by five-and-a-half this weekend in Louisiana.

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has issued subpoenas for 39 collegiate athletic departments in a probe of their relationships with student loan providers. At its most basic, this investigation is asking whether or not cash, kickbacks, gifts and other bribes or misleading measures were communicated between various student loan providers and the cited athletic departments.

Cuomo is investigating whether athletic departments at these universities agreed to promote SFS loans to students in exchange for kickbacks.

"Students trust their University's athletic departments because so much of campus life at Division I schools centers around supporting the home team," said Cuomo. "To betray this trust by promoting loans in exchange for money is a serious issue, especially when Division I schools already generate tremendous revenue from their student athletes. Today's action is an important new step as we continue to examine the unethical conflicts that pervade the student loan industry.

"The Attorney General's office is specifically investigating whether athletic departments evaluated UFS interest rates before recommending their federal loans, or if their endorsement of UFS was based purely on payments from the lender. Such an arrangement would constitute revenue sharing, which is a violation New York state consumer protection laws, as well as a violation of federal law.

D-IA football schools named (prominent schools in bold): Arkansas State, Auburn, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Colorado State, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Georgia Tech, Ohio, Oregon State, Rutgers, TCU, Tulane, Alabama-Birmingham, UCLA, UCF, Houston, Kansas, Louisville, Oregon, Pittsburgh, USF, UTEP. See link for complete list.

Of note: USC and Texas have also been scrutinized in a similar probe, but to my knowledge it has not been linked to their athletic departments but rather the university-wide financial aid offices of the schools.

It's good that athletic departments have an awareness of and working relationship with loan providers, but obviously there's a problem when that relationship gets too cozy and bad loan options are pressed upon students and student-athletes.

(Via: Yahoo!)

Former UCLA head coach Bob Toledo is headed to the Big Easy to become the head football coach at Tulane University.

A press conference has been scheduled for 8 o'clock Tuesday.

Toledo was fired by UCLA in 2002 mainly for his lack of institutional control and returned to the college football world this season as offensive coordinator for the bowl-bound New Mexico Lobos.

Despite a 20-game winning streak, Toledo's reputation was sullied by his inability to win the big games when a national title was on the line. Presumably, that won't be an issue at Tulane.

When Auburn welcomes Tulane to Jordan Hare Stadium Saturday afternoon, it will mark the first meeting of these two schools since 1955; two years before Auburn's national championship season. It's also Auburn's 80th homecoming game. The Tigers are 66-8-5 on homecoming and have won 14 in a row.

So what do we know about Tulane? The Green Wave are 2-4 overall and 1-3 on the road. Their lone road win was against Mississippi State on September 16th when they defeated the Bulldogs 32-29. Surprisingly, Tulane is ranked 13th nationally in passing offense. They have thrown for at least 295 yards in four of their first six games. On the flip side, Auburn has given up less than 150 yards of passing in five of their seven games.

The Green Wave defense is statistically one of the worst in the country, allowing nearly 36 points a game. They rank 115th nationally in scoring defense and have given up at least 24 points in every game they've played this year. Any way you cut it, this is not a very good Tulane defense. With Auburn's offense continuing to struggle in the red zone, don't be surprised to see offensive coordinator Al Borges run up the score on Saturday.