National Football League

Report: Rob Ryan could be candidate to take over at Tulane

Published Nov. 26, 2015 12:28 a.m. ET

foxsports

If Tulane is looking to make a big splash with its next head-coaching hire, it’s hard to imagine a name making a bigger splash on the New Orleans campus than the one reported by NBC New Orleans on Wednesday night.

As FS1 College Football Insider Bruce Feldman reported earlier Wednesday, the Green Wave are expected to fire head coach Curtis Johnson following Friday’s season finale against Tulsa.

Within the same hour, Fletcher Mackel of NBCNO tweeted a potential candidate to fill the position.

I was informed by Green Wave booster "if Barbara Burke becomes Tulane AD, Rob Ryan is a candidate to become head coach." @footballscoop
— Fletcher Mackel (@FletcherMackel) November 26, 2015

Ryan, of course, is the near-bigger-than-life, longtime NFL assistant coach who, until his Nov. 16 firing, was in his third season as the Saints defensive coordinator. The twin brother of Bills head coach Rex Ryan was guiding the league’s worst-ranked defense at the time of his firing. But with his pedigree, experience and name recognition, he would certainly be quite a step up in head-coaching profile for Tulane.

The Green Wave are 15-33 in four seasons under Johnson, with three of those seasons resulting in only two or three wins. (Tulane is currently 3-8 entering the Tulsa game.) Johnson did lead the squad to a 7-6 record and the school’s first bowl game in 11 years in 2013.

In September, Tulane athletic director Rick Dickson announced he would retire in May of 2016, the end of the athletic calendar. And that is where Burke, referenced in Mackel’s above tweet, comes in. Burke is the associate athletic director at Tulane, and by most reports is considered a leading candidate to replace Dickson.

Perhaps Dickson’s signature accomplishment as AD was the construction of Yulman Stadium, a 30,000-seat, on-campus stadium which opened in 2014. Burke arrived at Tulane in April 2014, during the final stages of the stadium’s construction.