Tulane football coach Willie Fritz is not leaving for Georgia Tech.
A few minutes after Fritz said he intended to be the Green Wave coach next year following the team’s Tuesday practice in preparation for the American Athletic Conference championship game, Pete Thamel of ESPN.com and Ross Dellinger of SI.Now tweeted Georgia Tech was finalizing a deal to make interim coach Brent Key its full-time coach.
The news came less than 72 hours after multiple outlets reported Fritz was about to become the Yellow Jackets’ next coach. A source close to the situation said Fritz had not agreed to any deal at that time, but speculation about his status persisted. He was asked four times during the AAC coaches’ teleconference on Monday about the Georgia Tech job and did not give a concrete answer either way about his future.
On Tuesday, Fritz was much more direct.
“Yes I do, yes I do,” he said when asked if he intended to coach Tulane in 2023. “We’re locked in and focused on 1-0 and winning this game. It’s a big game this week.”
Tulane (10-2) will be looking for its first league championship since winning Conference USA in its undefeated 1998 season when it hosts Central Florida (9-3) on Saturday at Yulman Stadium (3:08 kickoff, ABC). Although quarterback Michael Pratt dismissed the idea of Fritz’s status being a distraction after Tuesday’s practice, the hiring of Key would remove all doubt.
Key, who was the Yellow Jackets’ assistant head coach and offensive line coach under former coach Geoff Collins, went 4-4 after Geoff Collins was fired following a 1-3 start this season. Georgia Tech was picked sixth out of seven teams in the AAC Coastal division and had not won more than three games in a year since 2018.
