NEW ORLEANS, La. — To embark on a new journey in life can be stressful for most people.
But, for Scotland High School alumni and first-year Tulane football coaches Robert Beacham and Travian Robertson, the thrill of winning a conference championship makes the distress worthwhile.
Following a 2-10 finish to the 2021 season, the Tulane Green Wave are 11-2 this year after defeating the University of Central Florida 45-28 on Dec. 3 and claiming their first American Athletic Conference Championship.
Beacham, an offensive graduate assistant coach for Tulane, described his emotions during and after the game.
“I’m up in the (press) box, so you kind of get a little disconnected from the crowd and the fans, and all the stuff going on out there,” Beacham said. “We had a chance to…take a strong hold of the game and, then, we fumble on like the two-yard line about to go in and score. Then, they (UCF) end up scoring like twice within a four minute span, where we just had a mental block for a second. (UCF) made it 31-28 and it was just like ‘oh, man.’ And, then…coach (Willie) Fritz calls the guys together and said ‘hey guys, this has been the season. You know, nothing is going to be easy for us. You look at last year, you look at everything they’ve gone through in the off-season. Nothing’s easy and this is the opportunity that we kind of wanted and asked for. Let’s just finish this thing out.’”
“Once that game was over, it was just an accumulation of emotion,” Beacham said. “It’s that mountaintop feeling, where you start thinking about, not the fact that you’re on top of the mountain, but the fact that you climbed the mountain and you did all the stuff to get to the top of the mountain.”
With the AAC Championship win, the Green Wave await a match-up against Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Caleb Williams and the University of Southern California Trojans in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic.
Beacham discussed the upcoming match-up and how the Green Wave is preparing for it.
“It’s one that’s awesome for the school; it’s awesome for our guys,” Beacham said. “They’ve worked their butt off all year long. You know, just really the opportunity to play at a high-level and compete at a high-level against the best-of-the-best…and being in the Cotton Bowl, being the highest ranked group-of-five team in the country, is kind of a cool opportunity. You just look at it and it’s just like ‘hey, those guys play ball the same way we play ball,’ and they’re obviously a really good team. First-year coach there, coach (Lincoln) Riley…and, then, Caleb Williams is obviously a great player, and they’ve got a bunch of great players on the field. But, you know, I feel really good about our guys. They’ll be ready to go mentally and physically.”
Robertson, who was unavailable for comments, is the defensive line coach for the Green Wave. This season, Tulane has 24 team sacks (1.85 per game) and 60 total tackles-for-loss (4.6 per game).
While the numbers are down from last season (34 sacks, 82 total tackles-for-loss), the record speaks for itself after finishing 2-10 overall last year.
Beacham can notice the small differences this season that have coorelated with the success on-the-field, despite not being on the coaching staff last year.
“Not being here last year…it’s a lot of hear say,” Beacham said. “But, honestly, we just didn’t even focus much on last year. Obviously, (with) the players, it left a sour taste in their mouth from it and we had a lot of upperclassmen that (had an) unfinished business-type mentality. We’ve just got a bunch of good dudes that just do football the right way. They do the stuff right; they handle their business every morning when they come in for breakfast check, for getting their ankles taped for practice, (and) for coming into the meeting room. You know, our offensive-line, they’re just one of the most close-knit units I’ve ever been around. When we have meetings in the morning, every morning at 6:50, our guys will not come into the meeting individually. They’ll stand outside the meeting room and until every single offensive lineman is there ready to go, they’ll walk in as a group. It’s just the little details like that, that I think kind of just (translates) everything onto the field (and) into the game on Saturdays. I think that’s been the biggest reason that our guys have been successful this year; just doing football the right way.”
Beacham’s coaching run has gone strong, but it wasn’t easy to get to where he is now.
Beacham talked about his coaching journey and the battle it took to get a coaching opportunity.
“I kind of always knew I wanted to coach,” Beacham said. “It was always kind of a dream of mine; getting to coach in some capacity. I was able to kind of help out some at Scotland when I got done playing in undergraduate (school) and, then, I was able to go play in graduate school at a small school in west Tennessee. We had some success there, so I just felt like I had a good opportunity, knowledge from playing, and having success, that it was gonna leapfrog me into a good coaching situation. My senior year, I was actually talking to some of our coaches and I was asking them some advice on what they did to get into coaching, you know, to kind of get there foot in the door and just took their advice. What I did was, I actually sat down at night and I would just write letters. I kind of had like a generic format of a letter and I just basically wrote it, signed my name, put a comment on there that was relative to the school and the coach that I would send the letter to, and I just went on Google and started at the biggest level I could, and worked my way down. I probably sent hundreds and hundreds (of letters). I’ve got a picture of just a stack of letters and I spent hundreds of dollars on stamps; I didn’t realize stamps were so expensive. Heard back from a couple of schools (with) some of them saying ‘hey, appreciate your letter, we don’t have anything,’ some of them saying ‘hey, we do.’ And, I got a job, kind of bounced around for a couple of years and here we are. So, it’s been awesome.”
The Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic will air on ESPN on Jan. 2 at 1 p.m. from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
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