Month: September 2016

Categories
News News Blog

Shelby Farms Celebrates New State-of-the-Art Amenities with Ribbon Cutting

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

About 100 or more people — from former Mayor A C Wharton to dozens of bicyclists — gathered Thursday morning at Shelby Farm’s new First Tennessee Visitor Center to celebrate the Conservancy’s completion of their two-year Heart of the Park project.


“We’ve never done anything quite this big,” said Jen Andrews, the Conservancy’s executive director, while introducing a series of speakers who assisted with the project. “This park has attracted some of the best talent in our city and in the country and our community is going to benefit incredibly from it.” 

The $52 million renovation boasts an outdoor stage, Kimbal Musk’s restaurant The Kitchen, a charging station for electric vehicles, and an added 55 acres of meadow and 3,000 trees to Shelby Farms. To commemorate the Hyde Family Foundation’s financial support, Patriot Lake will be renamed Hyde Lake, Andrews said.
[pullquote-1] Shelby Farms Conservancy will host 30 Days of Celebration: More than 70 events during September to involve visitors with the new amenities that span the park’s 4,500 acres. 

“I’m excited to see people engaging with this space,” said Shelby Farms Communications Director Rebecca Dailey. “This project was signed by the community for the community.”

Landscape Architect James Corner, the lead designer behind New York’s High Line, said the revamped Shelby Farms won’t just serve people, but also act as a nature setting for vegetation, wildlife, and biodiversity.

“Every city has a great park,” Corner said. “Shelby Farms Park is more than 10 times the size of London’s Hyde Park, more than five times the size of New York’s Central Park, and more than four times the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. With these renovations to the lake, landscape, and the buildings, it’s probably one of the most distinctive parks internationally.”

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Politics and the Movies 4: Spartacus

Vladimir Lenin supposedly said “There are decades when nothing happens, then there are weeks when decades happen.”

Although it was not evident at the time, the 1960 film Spartacus was at the center of one of those historical nexuses Lenin had in mind. The story began in 73 BC, when a group of 78 escaped Roman slaves led by a former gladiator named Spartacus gathered marauded through Italy. Eventually their movement grew into a force of about 120,000. After two years of rebellion, the Roman armies, led by eventual Triumvirate member Pompey, cornered the slave army in the toe of Italy’s boot and massacred them, crucifying at least 6,000 of Spartacus’ followers on the Appian Way.

The story of Spartacus’ rebellion, which became known as the Third Servile War (yes, there were multiple slave rebellions in Roman times), was overshadowed by events that followed, when some of the war’s major players were involved in the transformation of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. The defenders of Roman slavery became the biggest enemies of Roman democracy. But there was a subset of people who never forgot about Spartacus: Socialists. It seems natural that Karl Marx, the guy who told workers to rise up because “you have nothing to lose but your chains”, counted Spartacus as a personal hero. During World War I, when it became obvious that the German cause was lost, a Communist faction called the Spartacus League agitated to end the war and institute socialism in the country. But, just like its namesake, the Spartacus League was crushed after the war by the nascent Weimar government and its leaders executed.

The Communists had better luck in Russia, of course, and after allying with the Capitalist West in World War II, mutual suspicions and opportunistic politicians on both sides made America and the Soviet Union enemies in the Cold War. Hollywood, a supposed nest of Communist subversives, was one of the first targets of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). There were a lot of leftists in Hollywood, and some people, such as screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, had actually joined the Communist Party of the United States while Russia and the U.S. were still allies in the war. Trumbo was no subversive: He wrote the classic 1944 war film 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, and rightly considered publicly advocating for his political views as his Constitutional right, no matter how unpopular they may have been at the time. When Trumbo was called in front of HUAC in 1947, he refused to name any other writers, actors, or directors who had been members of the CPUSA. As a result, Trumbo was convicted of contempt of Congress, and, after losing an appeal to the Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds, sentenced to 11 months in prison. He was kicked out of the Writer’s Guild and became the most prominent member of the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, unable to work in the industry.

Trumbo’s story was dramatized last year, when he was played by Bryan Cranston on the big screen. Much of the running time of Trumbo is dedicated to the 1950s, when Trumbo ghostwrote dozens of films, including pulpy titles like From The Earth To The Moon and Oscar winners Roman Holiday and The Brave One.
The same year Trumbo was blacklisted, a young actor named Kirk Douglas made a splash playing next to Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past. By the late 1950s, Kirk Douglas’ star was rising, and he wanted an iconic role to play after being passed over for the lead in Ben Hur. Douglas chose Spartacus, and brought on Trumbo in secret to adapt a biography of the revolutionary. Trumbo, a noted aficionado of amphetamines, cranked out the epic length screenplay in two weeks under the pseudonym Sam Jackson.

The historical epic proved expensive and logistically very difficult to pull off. After a week of production, Douglas, who was serving as exec producer, fired the director Anthony Mann and persuaded Stanley Kubrick to take his place. Kubrick at the time was an acclaimed b-movie director who had worked with Douglas on his anti-war film Paths Of Glory (which really should be the subject of a Politics and the Movies column on its own), and at $12 million, Spartacus would be the biggest project of his career. It was also the first time Kubrick had worked without total creative control, and to say he hated the process is a dramatic understatement. He famously sidelined the cinematographer Russell Metty, forbidding him to get near the camera. (Metty got the last laugh when his name was on the Oscar for Best Cinematography Spartacus won.)

When Douglas realized he had a hit on his hands, he publicly outed Dalton Trumbo as the screenwriter. The American Legion protested the film’s premiere, but when newly minted president John F. Kennedy crossed the picket lines, it effectively ended the Blacklist, and Trumbo worked openly in Hollywood until his death in the 1970s. Kubrick’s hard feelings didn’t stop when the film proved to be a huge hit and garnered acclaim as one of the best historical epics ever produced. He disavowed the picture and never worked with Douglas again.

Viewed today, the combination of Trumbo, Douglas, and Kubrick is fire. Game Of Thrones owes much of its formula of action, gore, sex, and politics to Spartacus. The screenplay is equal parts sword and sandals potboiler and thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom. If you didn’t know the history of Spartacus as leftist icon, the politics are mostly confined to the distance between Roman opulence and the cruel lives of the slaves. Coming as it did on the eve of the Civil Rights movement, the subject of slavery held special resonance with American audiences.

As a director, I look at the huge battle scenes Kubrick staged with equal parts envy and horror. On the one hand, wow, who wouldn’t want to command a literal army of 20,000 Romans? On the other hand, they had to feed and clothe 20,000 people for what amounted to about five minutes of screen time.  

Politics and the Movies 4: Spartacus (2)

But of course, the film’s most lasting legacy is in its final scenes, among the most iconic and deeply moving moments in American film history. The cry of “I’m Spartacus!” has been adapted by many movements, and parodied many times. But the scene has lost none of its power, and in context, coming after two hours of triumph and tragedy, it’s absolutely devastating. They just don’t make ‘em like Spartacus any more.

Politics and the Movies 4: Spartacus

Categories
Blurb Books

Set Warp to 1997

Lev Grossman’s debut novel gets the rerelease treatment.

by Jesse Davis

As I selected my latest find from the ever-growing stack of Advanced Reader Copies that looms on my bedside table, I felt the tendrils of expectation reach into my stomach, anticipation pupating and breeding the butterflies of excitement. Not only was I going to make a dent in my to-read stack, but this time I was probably in for a real treat. Why? Because I was about to, at last, read Lev Grossman’s first

 novel.

Though I had read and loved Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy (Viking/Penguin Books), I had never gotten around to scouring the library or Amazon for a copy of his long out-of-print debut, Warp, (originally released in 1997 by St. Martin’s Press). Based on the success of his recent work, or perhaps in celebration of the debut novel’s 19th anniversary, St. Martin’s is rereleasing Warp.

Why they chose to republish the novel a year before the more auspicious 20-year mark, I can only guess, but the whole rerelease — and the novel itself — feels a little underdone to me.  

Warp rests comfortably in the coming-of-age-tale category. It is replete with references to famous literary and cinematic wanderers, from Joyce’s Leopold Bloom to Picard’s Enterprise, suggestive perhaps that Hollis, the book’s protagonist, has become unmoored, never having found the tether that should have kept him grounded in adulthood. As the plot unfurls, there is no shortage of a conspicuous consumption of alcohol and resulting rum-soaked repartee, and the archetypal proto manic pixie dream girl shows up right on cue, leaning against a phone in an ATM vestibule, stealing long-distance calls from the bank, ready to rock Hollis’ world and waken in him something unnamed or unnamable.

The primary movement of the novel centers around Hollis’ decision to eschew the settled, office-bound career path and lifestyle his ex-girlfriend and most of his friends have chosen. Since Hollis’ friend, Peters, is housesitting for a wealthy couple, the irreverent pair set up shop, drinking down copious amounts of their unsuspecting host’s expensive wine. I remained uncertain as to why exactly the two cash-strapped loafers had to sneak into the house if Peters had been engaged as its temporary caretaker, but that small hurdle in logic was hardly the biggest thing troubling me as I read.

It wasn’t until about this point — page 166, the end of chapter 11 — that I realized I had read Warp when it was originally released, back at the tail end of the ’90s. Rarely do I find myself reading over half a novel only to have my memory jogged by an interesting plot device or some particularly memorable bit of dialogue. No, as such an avid supporter of Grossman’s later work, I find myself uncomfortably compelled to admit that the novel fails to significantly differentiate itself from any other bildungsroman.

It’s a decent first foray, but Hollis reads like little more than an early-model Quentin Coldwater, the hero of Grossman’s infinitely more mature and fully realized Magicians trilogy. Like Quentin, Hollis makes abundant references to popular culture, particularly to other flaneurs and antiheroes. Like Quentin, Hollis suffers from a post-collegiate ennui as he affects a halfhearted search for meaning and direction. The key difference is that, by the time he has written The Magicians, Grossman has something to say, and he has the polished skill and familiarity with his craft to get his point across. Warp finds him still searching for those tools, hanging lumpy dialogue on poor Hollis, making him a mouthpiece instead of letting him just be a character.

Warp serves as a portrait of an artist on the cusp of hitting his stride, still grappling with the ideas and methods that will propel the rest of his career. While it may not have been the most memorable novel, it was Grossman’s first step on what I sincerely hope will be a long career. And there is something to be said for first steps. Without them, the destination remains nothing more than a dream. 

Categories
News The Fly-By

Shelby County Again Tops Traffic Deaths in Tennessee

CREDIT: US DOT

Create your own infographics

Shelby County Again Tops Traffic Deaths in Tennessee

More people were killed in car accidents in Shelby County last year than any other county in the state, according to newly released data from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) released the figures Monday. Officials also offered a call to data and policy experts to help the department understand why national traffic deaths spiked 7.2 percent from 2014 to 2015 to a total of 35,092.

In Shelby County, 120 people died from car accidents last year. That’s up 12 percent from 2014 and is 44 more traffic deaths than in Davidson County last year.

Shelby County has topped this list at least going back as far as 2011. That’s likely given the population size of the county. The county does not crack the top 10 of car fatality rates per capita. (The No. 1 ranking there goes to East Tennessee’s Houston County, which has a population of about 8,500.)

Shelby County’s population is also the likely reason that it has the highest numbers of car deaths involving alcohol (40 in 2015), large trucks (8 in 2015), and speeding (36 in 2015) but rarely ranks in the top by rates of these deaths by population.

But there’s no doubt that traffic deaths are on the rise in Shelby County, according to the DOT data. In 2011, 92 deaths were related to traffic accidents. The number dipped in 2012 but has slowly risen to 120 in 2015.

“The data tell us that people die when they drive drunk, distracted, or drowsy, or if they are speeding or unbuckled,” said National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Administrator Dr. Mark Rosekind. “While there have been enormous improvements in many of these areas, we need to find new solutions to end traffic fatalities.” 

US DOT

This map shows the locations for all 2015 traffic deaths in Shelby County for 2015.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

AAC Picks: Week 1

2013 record: 57-23
2014: 67-21
2015: 71-24

THURSDAY
UT-Martin at Cincinnati
Maine at UConn
Tulane at Wake Forest

SATURDAY
SEMO at Memphis
South Carolina State at UCF
Western Carolina at East Carolina
Towson at USF
Army at Temple
Oklahoma at Houston
Fordham at Navy
SMU at North Texas
San Jose State at Tulsa

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

All The News That Flits

Do you double-screen? By that, I mean do you watch television with your laptop open or your phone in your hand? According to a report this week from Accenture Consulting, 87 percent of Americans watch TV with another screen in use. We’re Tweeting, posting on Facebook, texting, and reading online articles while catching the latest episode of The Bachelorette, or whatever. We’ve become multi-taskers, even as we goof off. Multi-goofers?

And not only are Americans double-screening, they’re continuing to turn away from traditional television viewing — watching a show as it’s broadcast in its original timeslot — at prodigious rates. According to the Nielson ratings, traditional TV viewing in 2016 is down 11 percent from 2015.

The trend is being driven by young people (I refuse to use the “M” word), who are turning from traditional television in droves, eschewing cable and satellite packages for streaming subscriptions of various kinds and free internet options. The Nielson Report for the first quarter of 2016 showed that Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 watched an average of 15 hours of traditional television a week. Compare that to the 50-to-64 age bracket, which watched an average of 50 hours of traditional television a week.

It’s easy to see that a generational watershed moment is coming for television and cable networks that will be similar in impact to the sea change that has deconstructed the daily newspaper business in the past decade or so. Our consumption of media will continue to “silo” for the foreseeable future.

The trend has been somewhat masked this year because of the presidential race — and Donald Trump — which has brought record increases in viewership and revenues for cable news outfits such Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. Fox News, in fact, is having its best year ever, averaging over 2.37 million viewers in primetime, which surpassed former cable viewing leader, ESPN.

Of course, compared to network news ratings in the years before cable and the internet fragmented the American viewing audience, that number is a pittance. CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, for example, once averaged 30 million viewers a night. Television news then was a family banquet, one where we all shared the same meal. It’s now a takeout pu-pu platter.

And those seemingly healthy Fox News numbers mask another issue that the fair-and-balanced folks will have to deal with very soon: The median age of their viewers is 68 — mostly male, mostly white, mostly conservative. That means more than half of Fox News viewers are over 68. To say that the network is facing a demographic challenge in the next few years is an understatement.

To the extent that they watch cable news, CNN is the choice of most younger viewers. But at 1.4 million total viewers a night, it’s a bite of leftover dim sum.

It’s gotten so that we only come out of our silos when events force us to do so. A major disaster, a mass shooting, a terrorist attack, a Super Bowl — or possibly a presidential debate — can lure us away from the mind candy we feed ourselves all day long. Not much else.

I guess the silver lining is that the devices we use to cocoon ourselves are also the very things that bring us together instantly — that alert us to events and update us on breaking news faster than Walter Cronkite ever thought about doing. When Gene Wilder died this week, I knew the details of his passing within minutes. Within a half-hour, I’d seen links to his best scenes and to tributes from dozens of people. I could pick and choose what — if anything — I wanted to see or read. I never thought about turning on the TV. It all just popped up in my social media feeds.

And maybe that’s the “news” of the future — instant and self-selected. Maybe we should all start thinking of ourselves as little cable networks.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

On the cover story, “Bad Behavior” …

“Strip clubs, porn, booze, weed, guns”

What are things found on Bruce’s monthly expense report?

Charlie Eppes

Q: “Did you expense the lap dances?”

A: “I did the job I was hired to do!”

Q: “Did you expense the lap dances?”

A: “YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT I DID!!!!”

Packrat

On Toby Sells’ News Blog post, “Marijuana Law Passes First Hurdle in Council” …

Of course, Director Rallings is against decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana — petty, nonviolent, drug arrests make the city quite a fair bit of revenue. The surprising thing, to me, is that for someone who is supposedly so “in tune” with the plight of our city, he sure is okay with sending a lot of otherwise innocent young black men to jail. This not only removes their opportunity to be active members in their homes and communities but further hampers their chances for future gainful employment by putting a mark on their record. Hmmmmm. I wish the local BLM chapter (or whoever the recent protesters claim affiliation to) had been more educated on his stance before they championed him so intensely. Memphis has so many other things we need to be focusing on rather than petty, nonviolent, plant-based offenses. Maybe the officers that aren’t arresting people for marijuana could focus on the giant (not so) underground heroin epidemic instead?

R.K. Ford

From Bruce Van Wyngarden’s Letter from the Editor, “Common Sense Pot Policy” …

I recall the alcohol debates in Mississippi when preachers and bootleggers joined together to oppose legalization.

CL Mullins

Purely from an economic standpoint, it makes tons of sense. How much of our public resources are dedicated to pot “criminals”? How many people are we paying to incarcerate due to breaking marijuana laws?

If it’s legal, instead of paying all these prices, you can regulate and tax the product. You create legal industries, where the businesses, employees, and consumers all pay taxes on the transaction. Today, those transactions are all tax-free. Also, by not loading up the population with criminal records, you make people more employable, which is a good thing for the economy as a whole.

I’ll also add that the advent of synthetic marijuana and the continual chase to ban new strains of that is a spin-off of having marijuana be illegal. If marijuana is legal, people don’t need to seek a “legal” alternative substance. Those synthetic marijuanas are getting more and more dangerous the more that they keep banning the new combinations used.

CL, I like your reference to the Baptists and the bootleggers. In this case it’s the Baptists and the pharmaceutical lobbyists.

GroveReb84

On Bianca Phillips’ News Blog Post, “Coalition of Concerned Citizens Plans Legal Action After Graceland Protest” …

I’m still kinda foggy on why they were protesting Elvis fans. I guess they have some kind of logic in there, but to me, it seems like an incongruous venue to be protesting against. Was Graceland doing something wrong that they needed to protest?

If they are upset about police behavior, maybe protest at a government facility? Maybe City Hall? Or MPD headquarters? Graceland seems like an innocent victim in all this mess.

OakTree

On Toby Sells’ News Blog post, “Boyd Threatens Overton Park Conservancy Funding Over Greensward Suit” …

Sick to death of all of them, especially Allan Wade. Self-righteous blowhards! Yeah … let’s pull the upteen millions allotted to the zoo chumps! They filed the first lawsuit against the City and the City Council! AND … THEY VIOLATED THE SUNSHINE LAW, with their March 1, 2016 shenanigans! They think their seats are safe on election day … think again! The citizens won’t forget.

pdp

Categories
Cover Feature News

Tiger Football 2016: A Norvell Approach

The University of Memphis football program is auditioning. Surely you’ve heard the whispers — loud as sirens — that the Big 12 Conference is evaluating expansion. One of the fabled “Power Five” conferences that award member schools the largest stacks of TV and sponsorship revenue, the Big 12 has had but 10 members since Missouri and Texas A & M departed for the SEC before the 2013-14 academic year. In the interest of gaining ground — particularly when it comes to revenue — on college football’s other conference titans (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, and Pac 12), the Big 12 is accepting hugs and kisses from schools desperate to land one of possibly four (but at least two) invitations for membership.

This, friends, is the U of M’s last, best chance to become a member of the NCAA’s ruling elite. (At least until further expansion creates “Super-Power Conferences.” Just wait. It’ll happen.) And qualifications for this form of exclusivity are wrapped in and around football. So consider the 2016 Tiger season a 12-game (hopefully 13-game) casting call. In the spirit of the league Memphis is pursuing, here are 12 storylines to follow.

Mike Norvell promises fast-playing Tigers this season.

Missing Pieces: Let’s get this out of the way. Several familiar (and historically significant) names from the 2015 season are no longer on the Tiger roster. Quarterback Paxton Lynch — a first-round NFL draft pick — has essentially taken Peyton Manning’s spot on the roster of the Super Bowl champions. Also gone are an all-conference tight end (Alan Cross), all-conference tackle (Taylor Fallin), a pair of Lynch’s favorite targets (Mose Frazier and Tevin Jones), and a running back who finished second on the team last season with 389 rushing yards (Jarvis Cooper). And, oh yeah, coach Justin Fuente — architect of the most significant turnaround in the program’s history — is now the boss at Virginia Tech. To act as though the 2016 Tiger season will be merely a continuation of last year’s success would be to insult the legacy of these departed difference-makers. The hope must be that the bar has been raised and secured high enough for new difference-makers to emerge.

A Golden Era Is Upon Us (Maybe): The Tigers won more games over the last two seasons (19) than in any other two-year period since football was first played by the U of M in 1912. With seven wins this season, a new standard would be established for a three-year period. (The Tigers won 25 games from 1961 through 1963.) College football absolutely drips with the words “tradition rich.” There are programs, sadly, that are tradition poor. Success has been infrequent and scattered over the 104 years Memphis has suited up a football team. What we’re seeing these days — remember that 15-game winning streak and beat-down of Ole Miss? — is the closest the Tiger program has come to the dawn of a significant era. Can it be golden?

The Tigers gear up for a (with hard work and a little luck) successful season.

The Norvell Way: Filling a departed coach’s shoes has not been difficult, historically, at Memphis. Typically it’s more like flip-flops, with a broken strap. But following Fuente will be different. Mike Norvell is the youngest of 128 coaches in FBS. At age 34 (he turns 35 in October), he’s less than two years older than DeAngelo Williams. The list of former wide receivers (like Norvell) who have found success as head coaches is a short one. But you’ve heard of Bear Bryant. (Hall of Famer Raymond Berry took the New England Patriots to Super Bowl XX; we’ll ignore the result.) Norvell insists his Tigers will play fast, particularly on offense where he built his credentials as a coordinator under Todd Graham, most recently at Arizona State.

“We’re gonna push the pedal to the metal, play as fast as we can,” Norvell says. “The way we practice and train, everything we do is focused on tempo. It’s an offense built for playmakers, and we have some guys here who can be very impactful.”

Among the playmakers Norvell considers integral this fall are tailbacks Doroland Dorceus (698 yards as a sophomore last year) and Darrell Henderson (a freshman), multipurpose threat Sam Craft (back from the basketball court), and receivers Anthony Miller and Phil Mayhue. With a pair of veterans — Trevon Tate and Gabe Kuhn — manning the tackle positions up front, the Tiger offense has the potential for star power. But if it’s going to approach 40 points a game (like the 2015 edition), a rookie will lead the way.

Paxton Who? “When I got here,” says Norvell, “I told the guys, if there’s one position I’ll guarantee competition, it’s quarterback.” Junior-college transfer Riley Ferguson — a member of the Tennessee program in 2013 — took the lead last spring in the Tigers’ quarterback derby, and last week Norvell named him the starter for Saturday’s opener.

Ferguson has size (6’4″, 190 lbs.) and put up solid numbers last fall at Coffeyville (KS) Community College: 67.8 completion percentage, 326.9 yards per game, and 35 touchdowns. As Norvell puts it, the Memphis quarterback will be “the guy who can truly manage the offense . . . play within the system.”

Ferguson is blessed with arm strength — a must at this level — but it’s a more intangible quality that has impressed his coach. “He came in and had a really nice mentality in how he positioned himself with the team,” Norvell says. “Guys like him as a person, but when he’s on the field, it’s all business.”

And why exactly is Ferguson a Memphis Tiger? “[Norvell] is a young coach, and I feel like I connected with him,” says Ferguson, who had been disappointed with his options after Coffeyville until Memphis swept in. “I felt I could be open with him and tell him my story, what I’ve been through. When he showed me the offense, that made me love [Memphis] even more. There’s nothing a defense can do to stop it. The only time the defense can be right is if I make a wrong read or they bring a pressure we can’t pick up. Based on the read-aspect of the offense, it’s unstoppable. And very fast.”

Fill Those Seats! While the Tigers were winning those 19 games the last two seasons, the U of M sold just under half a million tickets for 12 games at the Liberty Bowl. (465,917 to be exact, or an average of 38,826 per game.) Last year’s attendance total of 262,811 established a new record for a six-game home season, and the average attendance of 43,801 was the highest since the stadium opened in 1965.

These are great numbers by the standards of Memphis football, but they must continue to grow. With new seatback sections added, the Liberty Bowl’s capacity is now 56,862. If the program is to convince the Big 12 it’s worthy of membership, 50,000 fans on game day should not be exceptional. Consider: Last November, 55,212 fans showed up to see Memphis play Navy. (Navy! No SEC team on the other sideline.) It was the largest crowd to see a Tiger football game without an SEC foe since 1989. It’s not just the team auditioning folks.

Fall is for football, and, as the season approaches, Coach Norvell and the Tigers are pushing themselves to bring us a heaping helping of wins.

Miller Time: A year ago at this time, Fuente described wide receiver Anthony Miller as “different from anyone else we have.” And Miller had yet to catch a pass in college. As a sophomore, the pride of Christian Brothers High School hauled in 47 passes and averaged 14.7 yards per catch. He caught five touchdown passes but was one of 12 players to reach the end zone on the receiving end of a Lynch toss.

Look for Miller to be a more frequent target this season and for numbers that will capture more national attention. Ferguson has already described Miller as “the best receiver I’ve ever thrown to.” (The Memphis program has seen only one 1,000-yard receiver: Isaac Bruce in 1993.) Ferguson points to junior Phil Mayhue as another valuable target, a possession receiver who will extend drives with his route running and sure hands. When asked about Daniel Montiel, Ferguson says, “We’re gonna use the tight end a tremendous amount.”

Kickers Can Be Stars: Close football contests are often won (and lost) with the kicking game. Memphis has featured the American Athletic Conference’s Special Teams Player of the Year all three years of the league’s existence. Punter Tom Hornsey took the prize in 2013, and kicker Jake Elliott has earned the honor each of the last two seasons. Elliott and punter Spencer Smith were two of the four Tigers named first-team All-AAC after the 2015 campaign. Elliott converted 23 of 28 field-goal attempts last year (including nine of at least 40 yards), and Smith averaged 47.2 yards per punt, with 18 traveling more than 50 yards and 10 punts that pinned the Tiger opponent inside its own 10-yard line. Elliott has his sights set on the Lou Groza Award, given annually to the nation’s top kicker and first won by the U of M’s Joe Allison in 1992.

Defensive Matters: The 2015 Tigers set a program record by scoring 522 points (40.1 per game). And it’s a good thing, because the Memphis defense gave up 355 (27.3 per game), an increase of 40 percent over the previous season (253 points). This is a trend Norvell and new defensive coordinator Chris Ball would like to reverse. When asked about playmakers on the defensive side of the ball, Norvell starts with linebacker Genard Avery and safety Jonathan Cook (a transfer from Alabama).

“Genard is a very versatile player,” says Norvell, “and very explosive. He maxed out the other day with a 450-pound bench and 600-pound squat. He’s one of the strongest human beings I’ve been around. He’s moving better than ever. Arthur Maulet is a guy who can be a playmaker for us. I like our defensive front. We’ve got guys up there who can create havoc. [Defense] is our most experienced group, and they have a better sense of what they can do.”

Senior linebacker Jackson Dillon has compiled 20.5 tackles behind the line of scrimmage over his three seasons as a starter and aims to finish his college career with a third straight winning season, something that hasn’t happened at Memphis since 2003-05. “This is probably the best defense I’ve been a part of,” says Dillon. “Getting off the field after third down, that’s the biggest priority. Winning first and second down.”

Circle the Dates: The Tigers have an early bye week (Week 2) but seven home games. They travel to Ole Miss on October 1st (after beating the Rebels at home last year) and host Houston on November 25th (after losing to the Cougars last year in Texas). The top two teams in the AAC East will visit the Liberty Bowl (Temple on October 6th and USF on November 12th), but the Tigers must face Navy and Cincinnati on the road. The Tigers need a strong start and have three winnable home games to start the campaign (SEMO, Kansas, and Bowling Green).

Ground Control: With a former receiver calling the shots, count on the Memphis offense taking to the air with regularity. But even with the departures of Cooper and Jamarius Henderson (320 rushing yards last season), the Tigers’ ground attack is versatile and deep. Junior Doroland Dorceus led the team with 661 yards a year ago and ran for eight touchdowns. In many offenses, Dorceus would be a threat for 1,000 yards. But Sam Craft is back from the hardwood for his senior season, and freshman Darrell Henderson (from South Panola High School) is expected to get his share of carries. So the Tigers could match last season’s ground production (179.5 yards per game) but without a 1,000-yard rusher for a seventh consecutive season.

Four Words: Smart. Fast. Physical. Finish. These are the areas of emphasis Norvell has implemented, and they’re not all that different from the style of play Fuente preached for four seasons (and to profound success the last two years). A fast team, Novell believes, will hit harder and more often, making for a physical style that will be felt throughout a stadium.

“We judge the finish as strictly as anything in this program,” he adds. “We want to be better at the end than we are at the beginning.” A decent strategy, whether you’re measuring a half, a game, or an entire season.

Underdogs, Now and Forever: In its annual preseason poll, voters (among media) placed the Tigers third in the AAC’s West Division, behind Houston (the overwhelming favorite) and Navy. In handicapping Big 12 expansion, BYU, Cincinnati, Houston, and UConn tend to get more affection (again, among media types) than does Memphis. The underdog status is a motivator for the Tiger coaching staff and players, but not a distracting one.

“I don’t care what [the polls] say,” Dillon says. “They’re just people in suits, making suggestions. They’re not out there at practice, sweating, working.”

“It’s not unexpected,” Norvell says. “We know there are challenges in front of us. If we continue to grow as a football team, we have a great opportunity to put ourselves in a position to be a contender. Last year, we were 8-0 and in prime position but didn’t finish the way we needed to. We’ve got to build ourselves and show that we’re worthy of the respect that’s out there. There’s an anxiety. You’re anxious for the season. You’re anxious to see the development of players, how everything comes together for this specific team. I think we have a chance to do some great things.”

The beauty of college football is that we spend a long offseason and six days a week talking about what could be, what might be, or what should be. Then game day arrives, and the young men in helmets and shoulder pads actually make something happen. Perhaps a year (or two) from now, the Memphis Tigers will be picked to finish fourth or fifth in a division of a new Big 12. Or perhaps they’ll be defending another AAC championship. For now, though, there’s football to be played. A welcome season in Memphis, Tennessee.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Take No Prisoners

Recently, the Justice Department announced that the federal prison system would distance itself from privately owned prisons. The gradual implementation will take five years and instructs officials to not renew contracts or to limit the power of private companies in these “contract prisons.” This tangled relationship began at the federal level in 1997. But in many ways, the privatization of prisons is homegrown Tennessee politics.

Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the first and largest private prison company in the U.S., felt the aftershock of the news with a 35 percent drop in stock prices.

The Justice Department determined that private prisons were neither more cost-effective nor safer than government-run facilities. In an eight-category analysis, inspectors found that contract prisons lagged behind their publicly run counterparts. This included a higher rate of assaults directed at prisoners and staff. The Justice Department decided that contract prisons are a poorer option than government-run prisons.

This wasn’t the message touted by government in the 1980s. CCA first emerged in Nashville. Its cofounder, Tom Beasley, began his career under Tennessee politician Lamar Alexander. Within two years of its founding, many Republicans and Democrats at the state level owned stock in the upstart company that was generating substantial profits from the incarceration business.

The company also capitalized on growing discontent and legal qualms about state prisons. A series of riots in 1985 shook Tennessee politics. Lawsuits had already snaked their way through the courts, and an investigation found prisoner living conditions “shocking” and “unsafe.” The investigation cited recently enacted tough-on-crime measures as the major factor in a massive prison population boom. In the late 1970s, Alexander ran on a tough-on-crime platform that put people in prison and kept them there for longer.

Prisoners had begun airing their grievances to local newspapers. Prisoners at four locations burned facilities, took hostages, demanded a live press conference, caused more than $11 million in damages, and attracted national attention. The state’s leaders decided Tennessee needed to unload its prison problems.

Enter CCA. The governor’s wife, Honey Alexander, and Speaker of the House Ned McWherter quickly dumped their CCA stock to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. Then, in a swiftly called special session, Governor Alexander endorsed a full buyout of Tennessee prisons by the private company, calling this new alternative “cheaper and better.”

Other politicians and legislators questioned the legality of the deal but paid no mind to the implications of turning the prison system into a for-profit business. After revisions, the state legislature struck down the buyout proposal.

Although the full buyout never happened, the slow encroachment of private companies into prisons soon became a reality as the legislature approved the takeover of several state facilities. Republican members of the state legislature supported the move. Democrats largely accepted it and provided no viable alternative. Although prisoners and state prison workers protested privatization, politicians in Tennessee remained silent.

Those opposed to private prisons have gained important allies in recent months. For the first time, a presidential hopeful from a major party has made a serious call to do away with contract prisons. And although Bernie Sanders’ run for president is over, there is a political opportunity for Democrats to fight prison privatization, especially in light of the Justice Department’s decision.

The move to end the relationship between federal prisons and private companies is an important step, but it’s not where privatization began, nor is it where it should end. More than 30 years ago, the Democratic Party’s silence on the issue in Tennessee allowed prison privatization to take hold. The Justice Department’s decision affects only a fraction of prisoners living in private prisons. Most prisoners are still held at state-level prisons, where CCA began and is still a dominant force.

The same criticisms that the Justice Department acknowledged regarding privately run federal prisons hold true for their state counterparts. Ending the for-profit business model of incarceration at the state level is a battle that must be fought in state legislatures around the country.

Andrea L. Ringer is a PhD candidate in the history department at the University of Memphis.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Downtown Delivery Trucks Block City Streets

CREDIT: Toby Sells

A Memphis business owner once said you could get away with murder downtown as long as you turn on your flashers.

Deliveries to restaurants and office buildings often bring big trucks to a halt on major thoroughfares like Front or Union during peak drive times. The truck drivers will brake, turn on their flashers (or hazard lights), hop out of the cab, open the cargo door, and unload their haul for as long as it takes — all the while blocking a lane of traffic.

“I work downtown, run into it every day, and can’t stand it,” said Memphian Ryan Jones. “There’s got to be an alternative.”

It’s not murder, of course, but Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers are, indeed, instructed to look the other way when it comes to delivery trucks stopped downtown. MPD Major Keith Watson said Memphis is an old city, its streets aren’t as wide as others, and his department has to help facilitate commerce downtown.

“We have to keep the city and the downtown area thriving because that’s what it takes,” Watson said.

Truck drivers know the police won’t ticket them for on-street parking, Watson said. However, MPD will take action if a truck is completely blocking traffic, threatens traffic safety, has been abandoned, or does not have its hazard lights flashing.

Watson said civilian drivers just have to be careful. If a truck is blocking a lane of traffic, drivers should pull around them and “if they’re able to drive on paved streets without going off the pavement, then it’s a win-win situation for everyone.”

Toby Sells

“I would advise the citizenry or those individuals who may experience this to just have a little patience and allow commerce and trade to occur,” Watson said. “If they partake in any of these businesses or companies that are recipients of these deliveries, it’s needed. We have to allow it to occur.”

Almost anyone who has driven in downtown Memphis has come across a truck blocking traffic. But Terence Patterson, president and CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), said he hasn’t heard any complaints about it.

“It’s urban living, and there are certain things that have to take place,” Patterson said. “But, no, I haven’t heard any complaints about [delivery trucks] stopping traffic or there being any safety concerns about it.”

Patterson is willing to help, though, and said anyone with concerns about idled delivery trucks should contact his office.

Memphis is certainly not the only city dealing with downtown deliveries. The Federal Highway Administration said trucks delivering in downtown areas across the country cause 947,000 hours of vehicle delay annually.

Many cities have issued special guidelines for downtown delivery trucks drivers. In Columbia, Missouri, for example, smaller trucks are urged to use public alleys for loading and unloading.

But New York City and Pensacola, Florida, are taking it a step further. Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) gave the cities $200,000 for pilot programs testing an off-hours delivery program. The funds will help businesses there to re-tool their operations to make and receive deliveries at night when traffic counts are low.

DOT officials said if the program is successful, it could be launched in other cities, like Memphis.

“Moreover, it can become part of the solution to the larger congestion problem, bringing relief to people tired of spending hours stuck in traffic every day,” DOT said in a blog post.