2022 Purdue Football Coaching Search - Willie Fritz

Feature image from ESPN

Who Is He?

Willie Fritz is the Head Coach for the Tulane Green Wave (a top 5 mascot) who just won 11 games while beating out soon-to-be Big 12 programs Cincinnati, Central Florida, and Houston to win an American Athletic Conference Championship on the road to the Cotton Bowl.

And his resume…whew. Talk about the definition of a grizzled, proven veteran coach who made his bones in the south and the plains.

The 62 year old Fritz has been a college football HC since 1993. Not coaching - he’s been a head coach, every single year, for the last 30 years.

JuCo Blynn College for 4 years; Central Missouri for 13 years (97-47, two bowl games); Sam Houston State for 4 years (40-15, two-time FCS National Title Runner-Up); Georgia Southern for 2 years (17-7, one bowl game); and finally Tulane for the past 7 seasons (42-45, four bowl games, one conference title).

It’s not Power 5, but that’s one hell of a track record. He’s won and resurrected every on-paper difficult job he’s taken. He’s developed several players from the FCS or sub-Power 5 level to the NFL. And, since Central Missouri, he’s taken the jump to the next level every time his programs have peaked. (Which makes his move to stay at Tulane more intriguing - more on that later.)

His playing style usually relies heavily on the running and option game, and great line play, to set up any passes, but that was before Tulane - Junior Quarterback Michael Pratt spearheaded a high-scoring offense, throwing for 2,775 yards and 25 touchdowns, including a 5-touchdown AAC Championship-winning performance.

Why would he be successful at Purdue?

Frankly, he hasn’t failed yet at any of the stops he’s been at, and he’s been around long enough (and adjusted to college football at every level) to believe that the jump from Tulane to the Big Ten wouldn’t be intimidating to him. He’s also embraced high-scoring and high-flying offenses at Tulane, and could bring a very fun option and passing attack to Purdue next year - without mentioning a neat new toy he’d have in Purdue RB Devin Mockobee, who would be a perfect Willie Fritz future pro.

He also would likely view Purdue as the capstone to an absolutely wonderful college coaching career, so Purdue fans wouldn’t have to worry about the indigestion of another coaching search in the near future. Sounds a bit like a certain cowboys we all once loved.

Why could he flop at Purdue?

Tulane, while a very fun program, is in the AAC - a far cry from the Big Ten, even for the aforementioned teams making the jump to the Big 12. Recruiting, the transfer portal, budges, and the physicality of the Big Ten is at a different level - especially with Big Ten divisions being scrapped. That being said, the Conference USA to Big Ten jump didn’t hurt the last guy, so there could be some hope for Fritz at Purdue.

But that brings me to the second yellow flag for Fritz as a Purdue candidate - he’s never coached outside the south and the plains, and might not be familiar with the recruiting battlegrounds of the midwest. His offenses might adapt well for cold weather football, but he will need to show aggression and creativity in the transfer portal in addition to on the field. This local recruiting pipeline was critical to Jeff Brohm’s success as he jumped from WKU to Purdue, and is an advantage that Fritz can’t replicate on his own.

Would he come to Purdue?

He just turned down the Georgia Tech HC job (which would have been an absolutely perfect fit for Fritz’s option-style offense and Georgia Tech needing stability), and said he has every intention to be at Tulane next year. Judging by college football history, that is binding and there is no way he could ever go back on that ever, especially according to some extremely mad online fans who are upset that the BS Search Firm identified their head coach as awesome and a home-run swing that every single Power 2 vacancy should try to lure away from Manhattan, KS.

Ahem. Sorry, got derailed there for a second.

Yes, if offered a job better than Georgia Tech, and if offered the generational money and stability of the Big Ten, I do think there would be a way to pull Willie Fritz away from Tulane and to a program in the north. It also might not take top-half Big Ten money to lure him, leaving room for a very lucrative assistant coaching pool to help with local recruiting (including a nice pay bump for Mark Hagen to helm the defensive side of things).

Fritz is on par with several stable, grizzled coaching options identified by the BS Search Firm (Dino Babers, Dave Clawson) - he’s a known quantity, someone who fits Purdue’s offense-first history, and who would definitely stay a while as his final coaching stop.

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