Incoming Tulane coach Will Hall asserts he was the right choice for the Wave, if not the first

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Incoming Tulane coach Will Hall wasted little time mentioning the elephant in the room.

“I know I wasn’t the first choice for some people in here,” Hall said Tuesday during his formal introduction as outgoing coach Jon Sumrall’s successor. “But I can promise you this: I am the best choice and the right choice for this place at this time.”

Hall – who thrived as a Division II coach and Division I offensive coordinator before stumbling through his first and only head coaching job at Southern Miss – was hired on Monday, about two days after LSU defensive coordinator Blake Baker removed himself as a candidate and chose to remain with the Tigers and their new coach, Lane Kiffin.

A little more than a week ago, Sumrall accepted an offer to coach Florida, but has been permitted to continue coaching the Green Wave through the College Football Playoff.

Hall was led into a room full of media and Tulane boosters by a brass band and held a green and white parasol over his head, as is typically done in festive “second line” processions in New Orleans.

Hall, who went 14-30 at Southern Miss, was reticent to reflect in detail on his three-and-a-half season stint with the Golden Eagles from 2021 to 2024. That’s not necessarily unusual in his business; coaches tend to avoid burning bridges with former employers and often don’t want to be seen as making excuses.

“You can read the news or whatever and know that I might not have been the first choice,” Hall said when asked to list a couple concerns his detractors might have had about him. Then he referenced Pete Carroll’s hiring by Southern California in 2001.

Carroll had been fired by the New England Patriots in 1999 and didn’t coach in 2000. But he’d go on to win a BCS national championship with the Trojans, finish two seasons with AP No. 1 rankings and return triumphantly to the NFL with a Super Bowl champion Seattle team.

Carroll “was USC’s fourth choice when they hired him,” Hall said, alluding to reports that Southern Cal first tried to hire Dennis Erickson, Mike Bellotti and Mike Riley.

Hall also indicated that he’d learned from his Southern Miss experience, saying he now knows “exactly what I cannot do that causes me not to win.”

“I’ve got to be me; I know that’s a vague answer,” Hall said. “Being me works. It’s worked for eight years and it’s worked everywhere else I’ve been. And so, I will be unapologetically me every single minute of every day.”

As a Division II coach, Hall led both West Georgia and West Alabama to multiple playoff appearances.

Hall also played quarterback at the Division II level. In 2003, he passed for 3,531 yards and 30 touchdowns for a North Alabama team that went 13-1 and advanced to the NCAA Division II semifinals.

Tulane’s 2019 and 2020 bowl teams thrived offensively with Hall as coach Willie Fritz’s coordinator, and Sumrall invited Hall to return to the Green Wave this season as passing game coordinator and receivers coach.

The Green Wave (11-2) won the 2025 American Conference championship game over North Texas on Saturday night, moved up to No. 17 in the AP Top 25 Poll and received its first bid to the 12-team College Football Playoff.

Seeded 11th in the CFP, Tulane will travel to No. 6 seed Mississippi for their first-round matchup on Dec. 20.

Tulane athletic director David Harris said he and others involved in the Wave’s coaching search “certainly had concerns about what happened at Southern Miss.”

“If you’re looking at his overall resume, that’s the one time where he didn’t have success,” Harris said. “It was significant. But we weren’t in a position where we felt like that’s the one thing we focus on and that’s a disqualifying factor.

“It was a piece of the puzzle – something that we needed him to answer for,” Harris added. “He did answer for it. We were satisfied with what he shared with us. We felt like the combination of the other things that he did well just really made him a great choice.”

While Harris declined to share details about that conversation with Hall, he said, “when you have success and then you have a time when you’re not successful and you have adversity, that’s a great teacher. You can learn some things when you don’t have success that you’re never going to learn when you have success.”

Harris said numerous current Tulane players also stopped by his office during the search to voice their support for Hall.

“They didn’t exactly call and make an appointment,” Harris said, grinning at the memory of how they headed him off from taking a rest room break. “It was powerful. Not just because he’s a great coach and not even just because they liked him, but they talked about how he challenged them to be the best version of themselves.

“It really caught my attention that he was finding a way to show love as well as to challenge them,” Harris said.