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Georgia Tech is closing in on making Tulane’s Willie Fritz its next head football coach, although a deal was not in place as of Sunday night according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ken Sugiura.

Fritz, 62, would replace Geoff Collins, who was fired in September along with athletic director Todd Stansbury. Associate head coach Brent Key closed out Georgia Tech’s 5-7 season as the interim coach.

New athletic director J Batt has been searching for the Yellow Jackets’ new coach since being hired last month. Fritz emerged as a strong candidate over the past few weeks, although ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Sunday night that the school still plans to interview additional candidates this week.

Fritz landed his first head coaching job at Blinn College in 1993, going on to win a pair of junior college national championships while compiling a 39-5-1 record. Fritz spent the next 13 years at Division II Central Missouri, where he went 97-47.

Fritz’s next stop was at Sam Houston State, leading the school to consecutive national title game appearances in 2011-12 before leaving for Georgia Southern. The Eagles reached the first bowl game in school history in 2015, but Fritz was not on the sideline after accepting the Tulane job.

After a pair of losing seasons to begin his tenure at Tulane, the Green Wave went to bowl games in three of the next four seasons. Tulane went 2-10 in 2021 but rebounded in a big way this year, finished the regular season 10-1 and atop the American Athletic Conference following Friday’s 27-24 win at Cincinnati.

Fritz is 41-45 in seven seasons at Tulane and is 195-114 overall.

The Green Wave will play host to Central Florida in the AAC title game on Saturday.

–Field Level Media