Dannen’s legacy at Tulane will center on Fritz hire

If reports are accurate that Troy Dannen is finalizing a deal to leave his athletic director’s position at Tulane for a similar post at the University of Washington, he will have spent just less than eight years on the job in New Orleans.

His eighth day on the job is still the most important.

A week to the day after being introduced as the Green Wave’s new AD inside the Glazer Family Club, Dannen returned to that same podium to introduce Willie Fritz as the school’s new head football coach.

After Tulane had experienced 17 years of minimal and sporadic success since Tommy Bowden’s undefeated team of 1998, the choice of Fritz – a winner everywhere he had been – was a solid one at the time. It has proven to be a great one, with 16 wins in 19 games over the last two seasons, including a Cotton Bowl triumph over Caleb Williams and USC on Jan. 2.

Despite Tulane’s successes in other programs over the last quarter-century, most notably baseball and women’s basketball, football drives the bus at just about every FBS school.

What has happened over the last two falls not only has raised the visibility of Tulane’s entire program to new heights, but likely positioned Dannen to make the jump to a Power 5 program that is not only a top 10 team, but headed to the Big Ten next year.

Dannen and his administrative team would have to make four major head coaching hires in his first full year on the job – football, volleyball, men’s basketball and baseball. Fritz and Jim Barnes in volleyball worked out well; Mike Dunleavy Sr. and Travis Jewett would eventually be replaced by Ron Hunter and Jay Uhlman, respectively.

Be it coaching or administrative moves, Dannen has been willing to move on from decisions that weren’t producing favorable results. And he’s done the things necessary to get the resources needed for his coaches and staff.

Tulane and the conference that’s about to go away, the Pac-12, have been strange bedfellows over the years.

In the spring of 1980, Larry Smith left as football coach after a Liberty Bowl season to go to Arizona.

In 1996, Kevin White departed after a five-year stint as AD to go to Arizona State.

In 2000, Tulane hired Rick Dickson away from Washington State. Dickson would stay for 15 years before he stepped away, only to be replaced by Dannen.

Now, Dannen is reportedly headed to Starbucks country.

What happens next? It will be interesting to see who Dannen takes from his current administrative team to UW. And it will be interesting to see how, and how fast, president Michael Fitts moves.

Athletic director searches used to move at a snail’s pace – it was nearly six months from the time Chet Gladchuk left Tulane for Boston College in December 1990 to the day White was introduced, for instance. Not anymore, though – AD searches can go as fast or faster than major coach hires.

Which takes us back to December 2015.

Asked about the football coach hiring process at his introductory news conference, Dannen said it was  “going to be as quick as it needs to be. When we find the right person, we’ll hire the right person. This is certainly the most important thing I will do in my career.”

Eight years later, he was right.