Anyone who thought Jon Sumrall would be too distracted to prepare Tulane properly for its most significant game ever was not paying attention to his own history.

When he became Green Wave coach in December of 2023, he worked largely by himself for nearly two weeks because he wanted the assistants who would join him from Troy to focus on the Trojans’ Birmingham Bowl game against Duke .

That’s right. The Birmingham Bowl.

With the stakes exponentially higher two years later , he gave everything he had before 20th-ranked Tulane (11-2) whipped North Texas 34-21 on Friday night at Yulman Stadium. The Wave won its second American Conference championship in four years and assured itself a College Football Playoff berth five days after Sumrall was hired as Florida’s coach.

In the process,

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