A meeting of past, future SEC members
NORMAN — In 1949, OU won the Big Seven championship. That was perhaps Bud Wilkinson’s greatest team, the famed World War II veteran ‘49ers.
Ancient rivals Michigan and Ohio State shared the Big Ten title. California, coached by the great Pappy Waldorf, won the Pacific Coast championship. North Carolina won the Southern Conference, from which the Atlantic Coast formed.
The SEC, you say? Who won the Southeastern Conference back in ‘49, when the Sooners and Buckeyes and Wolverines already were riding high?
That would be the Tulane Green Wave, whose descendants storm Owen Field on Saturday seeking an upset for the ages.
OU-Tulane is many things. An historical intersectional game contested just once previously, 2017. A makeshift Sooner home game, moved from New Orleans just last weekend after Hurricane Ida blacked out the Big Easy. A curtain-raiser for OU’s national title hopes and Spencer Rattler’s Heisman Trophy campaign.
But it’s also this. A meeting of former and future SEC members.
What an instructive lesson, the idea that a contemporary mid-major, in a constant struggle for resources and spotlight, once shared a boardroom with the likes of Alabama and Georgia and Tennessee.
College football changes over time. It is ever-changing. Minnesota once ruled the Big Ten. Rice once was Texas’ chief rival in the Southwest Conference. Nebraska once was feared.
And Tulane once played with giants. The Green Wave in 1966 did what seems unthinkable to modern sensibilities. The Green Wave walked away from the fruits of the SEC.
This game “gives us the opportunity to play on the big stage, against a team that’s No. 2 in the nation,” said Tulane linebacker Nick Anderson. “Gives us a chance to step into the spotlight.”
Spotlight. Big stage. Tulane once had that on a regular basis. The Green Wave was a charter member of the SEC in 1933. An annual game against Louisiana State. Almost-annual games against Alabama and Ole Miss. Periodic games against Georgia, Florida and Auburn.
Then Tulane left the conference. Decided to go independent. It was kind of a thing in the 1960s.
Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964. South Carolina left the ACC in 1969.
Georgia Tech and Tulane decried the over-emphasis of athletics on campus. Georgia Tech departed in 1964 over a conference rule; legendary coach Bobby Dodd wanted a smaller per-year scholarship allotment. The SEC allowed 45 per year, and Dodd believed coaches were enticed to run off players who didn’t measure up, to make way for new recruits.
Georgia Tech’s decision was dubious. The Yellow Jackets spent 19 years as an independent, lost a tremendous amount of prestige and in 1983 joined the ACC. All for naught. The NCAA eventually enacted single-year scholarship limitations.
Tulane’s slide already had started. The Green Wave was SEC co-champion in 1934 and SEC trichampion in 1939. Tulane in 1949 was ranked as high as No. 4 in the Associated Press poll.
As late as 1955 and 1956, the Green Wave was .500 in SEC play. But from 1957-65, Tulane’s final nine seasons in the league, the Green Wave went 6-36-3, beating only Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.
“Tulane’s had some great teams, some great players,” said current Tulane coach Willie Fritz. “Just haven’t done it consistently.
“I believe you can have high-end academics and have a big-time Division I football program as well.” Willie Fritz
Tulane football coach, on the challenges facing his program
“This was a big challenge here at Tulane. But I believe you can have high-end academics and have a bigtime Division I football program as well.”
Tulane stabilized as an independent. Some winning records. A few bowl trips. Quality coaches like Larry Smith, Mack Brown and Tommy Bowden. The latter even coached Tulane to a 12-0 season and the No. 7 ranking in the final AP poll of 1998.
But nothing sustained. Tulane joined Conference USA in 1996 and jumped to the American Conference in 2014, but the Green Wave never has had the financial bonanzas that come with major-conference membership.
Vanderbilt, for example, always must worry about from where its next victory will come, but never its next million dollars.
And to that land of milk and honey head the Sooners, sometime between now and 2025. No school is leaving the SEC these days. The SEC is a financial lifeboat in these crazy times of soaring salaries and exorbitant costs.
Tulane leadership back in the ‘60s failed to see the future and left the SEC. Now OU leadership 55 years later is running the opposite direction. Funny how the world works.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-7608080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.