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| Duke faced off against Temple in the 2018 Armed Forces Bowl. Photo by Darla S Tamulitis La Vita Loca Photography Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved |
By Anthony Andro
for the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl
FORT WORTH, TEXAS (Janaury 3, 2019) How do
you know that Southern Miss and Tulane are rivals heading into Saturday’s
Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl at Amon G. Carter Stadium?
The
teams haven’t even played in 10 years and there’s still a little something
extra on the line. And that something extra is more than the Battle for the
Bell, which is the trophy that’s awarded to the winner of the game between the
two schools separated by a little more than 100 miles.
Even
though the teams haven’t played since the current rosters were either in junior
high or elementary, Saturday’s 17th annual bowl game at TCU will have a little
extra meaning.
“I
haven’t played in a game like that since I was at Tulane,” said Tulane senior
safety P.J. Hall. “There’s no animosity. But I think what kind of defines a
rivalry is the history behind the teams.
It’s not something that just happens
once a year. It happens over 10, 20 years. The history makes is a rivalry.
We’ve got the history, the bell. We’re taking it as a rivalry game.”
Neither
team has played in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl but they’ve met 30
times going into the game. Southern Miss (7-5) has the upper hand with a 23-7
mark. The Golden Eagles will be putting a six-game winning streak against
Tulane (6-6) on the line as Tulane hasn’t beaten Southern Miss since 2002.
The
ties between the two teams run deep, too. Southern Miss head coach Jay Hopson
began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Tulane in 1992. Southern
Miss junior quarterback Jack Abraham, who became just the third quarterback in
school history to throw for more than 3,000 yards this year, committed to Tulane
when he was in high school. That changed when Tulane made a coaching change and
brought in the current regime led by Tulane head coach Willie Fritz.
“For
our program it’s a rivalry,” Abraham said. “We’ve played them a good deal in
the past. We’ve still got the bell. That’s obviously a big deal and another
thing to play for. We’re treating this as a rivalry. We’re trying to approach
it as another game. I’ve got connections to Tulane. I’ve had connections to
them. The team as a whole is treating this as a rivalry.”
Both teams
share another trait. They are looking to the game to end their seasons on high
notes. Southern Miss lost back-to-back games to end the regular season while
Tulane dropped three straight to end the year.
They’ve
each had more than a month off to get ready for Saturday’s game and plan to use
it as a springboard for spring football and the 2020 season. The best way to do
that is with a win.
“It’s
pretty much standard protocol for both programs,” Hopson said. “The last one
(to Florida Atlantic) was a tough one to swallow. We were playing for the
division championship and the ball didn’t bounce the way we wanted it to.
That’s football. We just feel blessed to have an opportunity.”
And it
doesn’t hurt that a win is going to come at the expense of a rival.
“I know
when I took this job a lot of people said ‘When are you going to play Southern
Miss again?’” said Fritz, whose team is renewing its regular-season series
against Tulane in 2022. “We’re so close in proximity to each other. It’s a
natural rivalry and I’m glad we’re getting a little taste of it here in 2020.”
