IRVING, Texas - The Tulane Green Wave, which won its first American Athletic Conference title as part of a history-marking 2022 season, was ranked No. 23 in the preseason USA TODAY Sports AFCA football coaches poll.

Tulane enters the season as the favorite in The American after the Green Wave completed the greatest single-season turnaround in college football history last year, improving by 9.5 wins from 2021 (2-10) to 2022 (12-2). Tulane returns 14 starters from last year’s squad, which finished the season ranked No. 9 in the national polls on the heels of a thrilling 46-45 win against USC in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl.
 
Among the returning starters for Tulane is quarterback Michael Pratt, a junior who passed for 3,009 yards and 27 touchdowns while adding 10 rushing TDs a year ago. Head Coach Willie Fritz will have four returning starters on the offensive line and eight starters back from a defense that ranked third in the conference in total defense (360.4 ypg) and second in scoring defense (22.2 ppg).

Three other American Athletic Conference teams - UTSA, SMU and Memphis - received votes in the preseason ranking.

The American continued to live up to its status as one of the top FBS conferences in 2022. Tulane’s top-10 finish was the sixth by an American Athletic Conference team in the league’s first 10 seasons, while the Green Wave gave the conference its fourth New Year’s Six bowl win. The American has sent a team to either the New Year’s Six or the College Football Playoff seven times in nine seasons of the CFP era and eight times in the 10-year history of the conference.
 
The American will feature 14 teams for the first time in 2023 as UAB, Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice and UTSA join the conference. The first regular-season game will be a Week 0 matchup when Navy faces Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 26.