To the best of his knowledge, Montana linebacker Solomon Tuliaupupu is definitely done with college football after the 2026 season.
“But shoot,” he said in an interview this week, “nobody really knows, right?”
Perhaps no other active player in college football has been dealt as tricky a deck as the 25-year-old married father of two: back-to-back complex foot fractures and multiple ACL tears have tested the patience and perseverance of Tuliaupupu, but he’s not worried about the past. His eyes are fixated on the future, and rightfully so.
This week, the former USC linebacker and defensive end was granted his ninth year of eligibility by the NCAA. He’ll wrap up his oft-snakebitten career in Missoula after transferring to Montana in 2025. Tuliaupupu played in 14 games for the Grizzlies in 2025, registering 43 total tackles, five tackles for loss, two sacks and two forced fumbles.
“I had the best time of my life,” he said.
It was toward the end of Montana’s regular season that members of the coaching staff approached Tuliaupupu to see if he wanted to take advantage of one final year of eligibility. Tuliaupupu said that so long as he was wanted, he was elated to keep playing the game he loves because his road to this point has been a series of unfortunate breaks and tears that provided the sort of stop-start whiplash that derails most careers.
A former high school star at Southern California powerhouse Mater Dei High, Tuliaupupu suffered a Lisfranc fracture in his foot in the playoffs his senior year, causing him to miss his freshman season at USC in 2018.
After sitting out a year due to the injury, he returned to the field only to have the same complex foot fracture happen again in 2019.
Another calendar year passed and Tuliaupupu finally felt ready to compete for a starting linebacker spot, but in fall camp in 2020, he tore the ACL in his left knee.
The 2021 season was one to get well mentally and physically recuperate, but his long-term outlook wasn’t cloudy. He was determined to get back.
He did so in 2022 after transitioning to defensive end, where he saw action in all 14 games. Four years into his college career, Tuliaupupu registered his first career tackle in a 66-14 win over Rice in September 2022.
Suddenly, with the future looking bright, he was penciled in as a Day 1 starter as a defensive lineman entering the 2023 season. However, fate had other plans, and Tuliaupupu tore the ACL in his right knee in fall camp.
He returned for the 2024 season, but that season was as trying as any other. He lost a close family member the weekend USC lost at Michigan in September and later suffered an illness that forced him to be sidelined for the last quarter of the season.
It was at that point that Tuliaupupu walked into the office of USC head coach Lincoln Riley and told him he was retiring.
“I don’t know if I got it in me anymore,” Tuliaupupu recalled telling Riley. “I’ve been giving it my all, all these years.”
Tuliaupupu, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration from USC in 2022 and a master’s in project management from USC in 2024, moved to Salt Lake City, where he was preparing to start a job as a construction manager. It was then that he thought about how much he missed football, even after one of his most trying seasons in a career filled with them.
Tuliaupupu, with the help of the USC compliance office, learned he had additional years of eligibility and entered the transfer portal. He had offers from as many as five FBS-level schools to play defensive end, but his heart was set on playing the position he always loved: linebacker. Montana was the only school that offered him that chance.
After going 13-2 and making a run to the FCS semifinal round in 2025, Tuliaupupu is ready for one final ride in Year 9.