Friday, January 03, 2020

Battle for the Bell Rivalry Renews Saturday at Armed Forces Bowl

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.”

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