Categories
News News Blog

New App Aims to Promote Green Living on U of M Campus

A new app created by a professor at the University of Memphis is meant to encourage green living activities on the campus and beyond.

Green Fee, developed by Susan Elswick, a professor in the social work department at the U of M, is a game-based app that allows users to track their green-living efforts, as well as green-living issues they encounter.

In creating the app, Elswick, who is also a master gardener in the region, said she “nailed her love for horticulture, technology, and social behavior sciences together. Green living is a behavior that we can easily see and track.”

University of Memphis

Green living app developer Susan Elswick

Elswick said the app is similar to Waze, an app drivers can use to track road conditions and incidents to give other drivers on the road a heads-up. With the green-living app, users can identify and geotag a green-living issue or problem they see, such as trash on the ground. Elswick said they can “take it a step further” by taking action to address the issue and then tagging that activity.

Examples of green-living activities could include carpooling, walking, or biking to campus, picking up trash, or turning the lights off when leaving home. Green activities can also include reducing blight, pulling weeds, or working in a community garden.

A big, green issue in Memphis is abandoned tires that litter the city, Elswick said. “Tires are a huge problem so someone could even see some tires on the side of the road and decide to pick them up and repurpose them. It’s that easy.”

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Each time users identify an issue, they get one point. For addressing the issue or doing their own green activity, users get two points.

The points aren’t tied to an external reward outside of the game, but Elswick said that could be a possibility in the future.

Green Living

A screenshot from the green living app

Elswick hopes the app will raise awareness about and get more students involved in green-living practices. She also said the app will help show the university’s green footprint in the community.

“To be able to visually see our impact on a map is huge,” Elswick said. “We know our outreach on campus is pretty good, but there’s a lot of students who participate in green living that live in the community and we want to highlight those practices.”


The app is slated to launch in the Android and Apple app stores in two weeks, Elswick said. It will be free to all university students, faculty, and staff.

Elswick said she anticipates the app being widely used on campus, as she says all of the university’s green programming is “pretty well-received.”

“We have two community gardens on campus, we have pop-up gardens, and a lot of students across all departments who are engaged in green programming and research,” Elswick said. “I’m confident the app will get support on campus ”

Eventually, Elswick said the app will be available to community partners and businesses who want to track their philanthropic efforts and outreach in the city related to green living.

“For example, if a local company goes out and cleans a flower bed, they can geo-locate that,” Elswick said. “That would then show up on a map with their brand on it.”

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Lounge With a View: Mississippi Terrace Opens This Fall at Pyramid

Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid

A new outdoor lounge is headed for Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid this fall that offers a one-of-a-kind view of the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi Terrace will overlook the river from the third floor of the Pyramid’s Big Cypress Lodge hotel. The 7,000-square-foot lounge will be open to hotel guests and Pyramid visitors.

The bar will offer beer, wine, and cocktails. The hotel describes its small-plate menu as “New American comfort favorites and down-home Southern twists.“ (See the full menu below.)
Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid

Here’s how the hotel describes the vibe of the Mississippi Terrace:

“A feel-good ambiance evolves from relaxed al fresco afternoons and painterly sunsets over the Mississippi River to lively star-filled nights. Elegant gathering areas across the terrace’s 7,000-square-feet featuring oversized upholstered sofas and chairs with tables, high-top communal tables with modern pendant spheres that glow beneath awnings, striking circular tables that surround cozy fire pits, and dining tables for four with sun umbrellas.

“A copper-top destination bar offers additional seating while DJ grooves and live music (on select nights) filter through the terrace from a stage across from the bar. Hanging market lights, mood-inducing blue uplighting and beautiful landscaped plants, flowers and trees in wooden planters tie the meandering spaces together.”

No firm date was given for the opening of Mississippi Terrace. But when it does open, it’ll serve guests from 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.
Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid

Here is a sample of the Mississippi Terrace menu.

Signature cocktails include:

Sweet Tea Mule – Deep Eddy Sweet Tea Vodka, peach puree, lemon juice, ginger beer, fresh mint
Southern Lady – Maker’s Mark, Jalapeno, mint, raspberry, fresh lemon juice, sparkling rose
Mississippi Margarita – Cazadores Blanco, Del Maguey Vida, agave nectar, fresh lime juice, grapefruit
Summer Rye – Rittenhouse Rye, strawberry, Aperol, fresh lime juice, absinthe
Strawberry-Basil Cosmo – Tito’s Vodka, Clear Creek Cranberry Liqueur, simple syrup, fresh lime juice, muddled fresh strawberries
Aromatic Gin Fizz – Slipsmith London Dry Gin, Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup

Menu highlights:

Charcuterie & Cheese Board – venison and duck sausage, Genoa salami, aged cheddar, house-made pimento cheese, charred onion jam, wholegrain mustard and garlic flatbread
Smoked Trout Dip – green onion, caper berries, garlic flatbread
Heirloom Tomato & Mozzarella Salad – arugula, spring mix, sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, heirloom grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, balsamic reduction
Bacon Guacamole – avocado, lime juice, cilantro, tomatoes, smoked bacon, fresh jalapeno, onion, queso fresco, corn tortillas
Fresh-Baked Soft Pretzel – cheddar ale dipping sauce and whole grain Creole mustard
Margarita Flatbread – fresh mozzarella, heirloom grape tomatoes, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic reduction served on garlic flatbread
Italian Flatbread – hearty tomato sauce, roasted grape tomatoes, Italian sausage, fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced red onion, arugula served on flatbread
Southern Fried Catfish & Gator Basket – spicy, hand-breaded alligator, fried catfish fingers, sweet jalapeno cream sauce, house-made lemon tartar sauce

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Best Bets: Double Dog at Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q

Michael Donahue

Double Dog at Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q


If you order a “hot dog” at Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q, you’ll get the conventional wiener in a bun.

But if you order a “Double Dog,” you’ll get one of my all-time favorite sandwiches.

The Double Dog is two sliced fried hot dogs on a lightly-toasted hamburger bun. You can get anything on it, but most people order it with slaw, mustard, and onions, says Three Little Pigs owner Charlie Robertson.

I love the barbecue at Three Little Pigs, but every so often I have a craving for their Double Dog. Actually, I always have a craving for their Double Dog, but it’s a sandwich I’d better not eat every day.

“It’s a sandwich I thought of ‘cause I like hog dogs and I like a fried hot dog,” says Robertson.

He believes he got the idea back in the day from Dyer’s hamburgers when it was on Cleveland. “Only Dyer’s threw them in the grease and deep fried them.”

The folks at Three Little Pigs cut the hot dogs in half and “fry them on a flat grill almost like a hamburger.”

You grill the hot dog until it’s brown, Robertson says. “Most people want them really brown.”

He, personally, likes to – at times – take one of his hot dogs and “drop it in the deep fryer.”

Double Dogs have been on the menu since Robertson took over Three Little Pigs 30 years ago. “It didn’t just take off,” he says.

It’s still not one of their top sellers, he says, but I think they’re fabulous. I love the slaw, which has a slightly-sweet taste to it. It’s the same slaw they use on their barbecue sandwiches. “It’s got sugar in it,” Robertson says.

They buy chopped cabbage, but they make the sauce for the slaw from scratch. It’s the same slaw sauce recipe that was at Three Little Pigs when he bought the place in 1989, Robertson says. “And we stuck with it.”

I asked if it was mustard based. “It’s mayonnaise-based slaw.”

OK. Now that I’ve written this, I WANT ANOTHER DOUBLE DOG.

Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q is at 5145 Quince Road; (901)-685-7094


Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Pets of the Week (8/27-9/2)

Each week, the Flyer will feature adoptable dogs and cats from Memphis Animal Services. All photos are credited to Memphis Pets Alive. More pictures and more information can be found on the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.

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Categories
News News Blog

Group Calls for Memphians to Record, Share Stories

StoryCorps’ mobile recording booth

Have an interesting story to share with the world?

Well, one New York-based organization is giving Memphians a chance to do just that, beginning next month.

StoryCorps, whose mission is to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world,” is partnering with WKNO to record and share stories of Memphis.

StoryCorp’s mobile recording booth will be parked at Crosstown Concourse September 10th through October 9th to gather stories from Memphians.

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The goal is to give people from different backgrounds, typically two friends or loved ones at a time, the opportunity to record a meaningful 40-minute conversation or interview with each other. The conversations will then be archived at the Library of Congress in the American Folklife Center. To sign up for a slot, go here.

StoryCorps’ stop in Memphis is a part of its 2019 cross-country, story-collecting mobile tour that also includes stops in Flint, Michigan, Washington D.C., and Yuma, Arizona.

Since StoryCorps launched its mobile tour in 2005, it has recorded nearly 75,000 interviews from more than 150,000 participants across the country. The group calls its tours “one of the largest oral history projects of its kind.”

Watch the video below to learn more about StoryCorps’ work.

Group Calls for Memphians to Record, Share Stories

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Dramatis Personae: Observations from the Ostranders

The 2019 Ostrander Awards ceremony held Sunday at the Orpheum was, as one has come to expect, packed with soigné theatre lovers in character and out, in their heads and out, cheering or consoling as needed.
Jon W. Sparks

Debbie Litch, executive producer at Theatre Memphis. TM won 10 of the Ostrander trophies this year.

The event alternated musical numbers and clusters of awards, keeping things going at a good clip. Among the highlights were Debbie Litch, executive producer at Theatre Memphis, giving the Behind the Scenes Award posthumously to Mike Lupfer. Lupfer died last year at age 81 and is remembered as a worldly man with diverse interests.

As described by Chris Davis recently in Memphis magazine, he was “a teacher, a world traveler, a family man, a theater lover, a friend to many, a past chair of the psychology department at the University of Memphis, a sometimes scoutmaster, and a paragon of local leadership and volunteerism.”

Jon W. Sparks

Kenneth Neill, publisher at Ostrander sponsor Contemporary Media, Inc., and Elizabeth Perkins, Ostrander director.

The estimable Chris Ellis transported himself from Hollywood to introduce Christina Wellford Scott, the recipient of this year’s Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award. Scott and Ellis are longtime friends from back in the Pleistocene era of Memphis theater. Ellis departed the local theater scene and ended up in Hollywood where he books films and television shows with some frequency. Among his credits: Armageddon, Apollo 13, My Cousin Vinny, The Dark Knight Rises, Godzilla, Catch Me If You Can … you get the idea. He is also an illustrator who does work for Memphis magazine as well as posting death anniversary drawings on his Facebook site, occasionally serious, frequently funny, and typically offensive.
Jon W. Sparks

From left: Chris Ellis, Kenneth Neill, and Christina Wellford Scott arguing over how to pronounce Ms. Scott’s first name.

Ellis’ intro of Scott was, by the way, occasionally serious, frequently funny, and typically offensive. He insisted on pronouncing the award winner’s first name as “ChrisTYNE-a,” causing occasional moments of apoplexy in the audience, members of which would holler “ChrisTEEN-a” to no avail.

Jon W. Sparks

Kell Christie directed the all-woman Lizzie: The Musical at New Moon Theatre, which won Best Ensemble in a Musical, and earned awards for Annie Freres as Best Supporting Actress, and for Gene Elliott for Best Sound Design for a Musical.

The director Dennis Whitehead Darling got the gold of the evening, winning Best Direction of a Drama in the community and professional division for The Parchman Hour: Songs and Stories of the ‘61 Freedom Riders at Hattiloo Theatre, and Best Direction in the collegiate division for Intimate Apparel at the University of Memphis. Parchman also won Best Production of a Drama and Intimate Apparel won Best Overall Production. Yes, but what has he done lately you ask? Go to Hattiloo this weekend and see Jelly’s Last Jam through September 1st.

Jon W. Sparks

Veteran actor Curtis C. Jackson (left) with Karl Robinson, winner of this year’s Larry Riley Rising Star Award.

It was also a splendid evening for Jason Spitzer who picked up two awards for Little Women: Best Original Script and Best Production of an Original Script. Spitzer is somewhat of a fearless genius who adapts and directs stories that he loves. A few years ago he revamped a turgid version of A Christmas Carol at TM and, well, God bless us every one for that improvement.
Jon W. Sparks

Jason Spitzer (left) nabbed two awards for Little Women at Theatre Memphis’ Next Stage: Best Original Script and Best Production of an Original Script. The play also got a Best Costume Design for a Drama award for Heather Steward. At right is Jim Palmer, who won the Eugart Yerian Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 along with his wife, Jo Lynne Palmer.

Jason Gerhard was on both sides of the awards ceremonies, first getting his own plaque as Best Featured Performer in a Drama for his work in Junk at Circuit Playhouse, and then introducing the winner of the Larry Riley Rising Star Award, Karl Robinson.
Jon W. Sparks

Jason Gerhard, winner of Best Featured Performer in a Drama for his work in Junk at Circuit Playhouse.

First time winners are predictably excited, but few were as over the moon as Ariona Campbell, who won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama in the collegiate division for Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Southwest Tennessee Community College. She attended the ceremonies with daughter London.
Jon W. Sparks

Ariona Campbell won Best Supporting Actress in a Drama in the collegiate division for Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Southwest Tennessee Community College. With her at the Orpheum ceremonies is her daughter London.

After the ceremonies, attendees adjourned to the Halloran Center next door to further schmooze, emote, pose, crack wise, and try to impress potential directors. After all, these are theater people, people.

Jon W. Sparks

John Maness was one of two winners for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his work in TM’s 1776. The other awardee was Michael ‘Quick Change Artist’ Gravois in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at Playhouse on the Square.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: An Unlikely Trio and Wet Heat

It’s electric

About 17,000 Memphis Light, Gas & Water customers were without power last week when a storm rolled in Tuesday night. Reddit user tacojohn48 captured a striking glimpse of it over the Harahan Bridge.

But it’s a wet heat

Reddit user iliveinmemphis posted what we all thought last week.

“Going outside in Memphis the past two days is like opening your dishwasher to get a cup right after it finishes.” The comments on the post nailed it, too.

BandidoCoyote: “Getting out of the morning shower and getting dressed without drying off.”

Tralfamadorian82: “Opening your dryer before the towels are dry.”

Benefit_of_mrkite: “People lived here before AC. Double apply your Gold Bond and keep on.”

A decade of love

Joe Birch, Frayser Boy, and Holly Whitfield walk into a bar …

The I Love Memphis blog celebrated 10 years Saturday with a packed-out birthday party at Railgarten. For the anniversary, Birch tweeted what scientists are calling one of the most Memphis photographs ever taken.

Categories
News News Blog

U of M Moves to Brand Central Avenue as Arts Corridor

Google Maps

Future home of the Central to the Arts Hub

The University of Memphis is working to designate a stretch of Central Avenue as the “Central Arts Corridor.”

To help brand this part of Central, between Patterson and Zach Curlin, as an arts corridor, the College of Communications and Fine Arts (CCFA) is taking over the former information kiosk at Central and Patterson and reopening it as the Central to the Arts Hub.

The small, circular building will serve as a “gateway” to the arts corridor, which will be a “real arts destination,” Anne Hogan, dean of the university’s CCFA, said.

“I think this building is an opportunity to brand and designate this as an area for Memphis where students, the university, and the wider communities can come and benefit from the resources and arts,” Hogan said. “We want everyone in the city to know we’re doing creative stuff over here.”

Once open, the art hub will house pop-up galleries featuring one student’s work for two weeks at a time. This gives students the opportunity to curate their own gallery and sell their work. There will “always be fresh art to see there,” Hogan said. Genres of art to be featured include everything from sculpture to ceramics to photography.

[pullquote-1] The art hub will also be a place where the public can come and learn about the university’s art programs and upcoming events.

Hogan said the goal is for the arts corridor and the new hub to bring attention to the many performances happening at the university throughout the year.

“Our students are just so talented and they do great work,” Hogan said. “We have performances going on all the time that are open to the wider public, but a lot of times, people just don’t realize that they are here.”

Hogan said the college has “amazing art facilities and resources” that are all located just off of Central. On this segment of Central sits the university’s art museums, galleries, theater, and concert hall.

archimania

Rendering of Scheidt Family Music Center

A big piece of the college’s rebranding effort is the addition of the new Scheidt Family Music Center, for which construction is slated to begin this fall and wrap up in the spring of 2021.

It will occupy much of what is now a parking lot on the north side of Central just east of Patterson.

The 90,000-square facility is going to be a “beautiful, highly visible building,” Hogan said. It will be a state-of-the-art facility, she said, and an “incredible asset for the larger Memphis community.”

Not only will the center host student performances, but the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and other community organizations will also perform in the new space.

Hogan said when she assumed the role of dean for the CCFA two and a half years ago, the college had been talking about building a new music center “for literally decades. It was a dream everyone had, and now it’s finally happening.”

archimania

Rendering of Scheidt Family Music Center interior

The public is invited to take a sneak peak of what the music center will look like on Saturday, October 5th, during the unveiling of the Central to the Arts Hub. There will be renderings of the Scheidt Family Music Center on display in the newly opened hub.

The half-day event, scheduled for noon to 4 p.m., will also feature live music from students in the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music and stage combat demonstrations from the Department of Theatre & Dance.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Herenton Rouses Women Supporters with Promise of Victory

Willie Herenton won’t be, as Gail Floyd-Tyree called him on Saturday, “the first boss to go back in that chair.” Several others, including three-time Mayor Ed Crump (who once literally owned the name “Boss”) have managed to get back into the JB

Herenton at his Saturday rally

office of mayor after serving in it previously.

But Herenton — who, as several speakers (including himself) noted at a jam-packed “Women for Herenton” rally, was there from 1991 through 2009 — agrees with Tyree, the executive director of Local 1377 of the AFSCME union, who gave him a rousing introduction. He, too, believes strongly that he can get back into City Hall in the role of mayor.

And there was much about Saturday’s rally, held in a cavernous warehouse-sized space on South Third Street, that could just about convince anybody.

First, there were the numbers, upwards of a thousand women, all patently excited and happy to be there. Then there was the enthusiasm, simmering to begin with, and periodically fired into high decibels in the course of the event. Finally, there were the obvious signs of organization and preparation — a forest of large-sized “HERENTON” signs handed out by helpers at appropriate moments, much in the manner of a national political convention.

And, perhaps most convincingly, there were the several voter-registration tables around the sides of the hall, staffed by teams of women supporters who, from time to time, appeared deluged by new applicants.

JB

Women supporters came out en masse.

The event was so emotionally rousing as to remind onlookers of the first Herenton campaign in 1991, the one that, by a razor-thin margin of 142 votes over incumbent Dick Hackett, made Herenton the first elected black mayor in Memphis history. And it more or less overpowered the more recent memory of the half-hearted Herenton run for Congress against incumbent Steve Cohen in 2010, a Democratic primary race Herenton lost by a margin of 4 to 1.

Both Herenton’s campaign manager, Robert Spence, and AFSCME’s Floyd-Tyree, generated some abundant advance energy on behalf of Herenton. Said Spence: “I heard our opponent’s theme” (meaning current Mayor Jim Strickland, running for reelection).

“‘Good at the basics.’ What is that? When did somebody come to office saying the best they could do was mediocre? … We can do better than that,” said Spence. “And the basics don’t even get good. Trash on the streets. Potholes. Crime. … We know who ran the city in an exceptional and extraordinary way. … The Lion is walking in the jungle, and they can’t stop it.”

Spence was outdone and then some by Floyd-Tyree, whose union is one of several that have endorsed the former mayor. Saying that she was “confirmed in my soul that this is divine intervention,” Tyree concluded a passionate speech thusly: “You can’t be in the presence of Willie Herenton and not know he’s a boss. Walks like a boss, talks like a boss. He’s the boss!” And: “Where we taking our boss?” The answer came back: “City Hall!”

Expectations in the hall were so high that it would have been virtually impossible for Herenton himself not to deliver. And he did.

After some pro forma early praise for his volunteer workers and an expression of his belief in the power of the spiritual realm, Herenton said, “There’s power in the vote of women, too. We made history in 1991 when you elected Willie Herenton as the first African-American mayor. You didn’t stop there. You reelected me in 1994, you reelected me 1997, in 2000, in 2004, and 2007. And guess what, you’re going to elect me in 2019!”

Herenton was wrong. The actual reelection sequence was 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. But it hardly mattered. The women roared their agreement.

Herenton continued. “Someone asked me a question: Willie, can you do it? I took them to the book: Philippians 4:13.” There was a roar. “I see we’ve got some church folks in here,” said Herenton, who then quoted the scripture: “‘’You can do all things through Christ!’

“Sometimes the Lord makes the lowly overcome the highly,” Herenton said. He made note of opponent Strickland’s much-touted $1 million campaign budget. “They’ve got the money power. But we’ve got people power. That’s what’s going to take us over the top on October 3rd.

“This crime problem is deep. It bothers me, this present administration is weak on crime. A lot of people in our community, they have no hope. They’ve given up. They have no inspiration. We’ve got to embrace the values that our parents gave us.” With a nod to his sister in the audience, he said, “Our mother taught us: Work. Education. Church. Work hard and you can be successful. Somehow or another we’ve got to bring those values back. … There’s so much hatred, so much jealousy, so much envy among our people.

“I want you to know that this election is very critical to the future of our city. You’ve asked the question of why am I going back into public service. Because it’s late in the evening for me. I want to tell you. I want you to hear me. It’s late in the evening, but the God I serve is still using me.”

The whoop from the crowd was so great as to befit one who had freshly emerged from Sinai with brand new tablets.

And indeed, Herenton had a revelation of sorts for the women. But first there was another Biblical reference, one that might not have gone down well amid a group of feminists but one that scored well with this audience.

“When I look in the Bible,” Herenton said, “I see that first God made man, and he made women, the helpmate. There were great women in the Bible. Esther, Ruth … I could go on and on. … Since the beginning of Biblical times, there have been women of value, women of courage, women who nurtured civilization. And today women are still relevant.

“I am appealing to you. You have been there for me in every election. Women have voted overwhelmingly for me. And I’m asking you to do it again.”

The women shouted their assent. Then Herenton favored them with the great revelation:

“Before I take my seat, let me tell you what we’re going to ask you to do. This is real strategic. Early voting starts September 13th. We have you guys in our database, and we’re going to reach out to you, because I don’t mind telling you part of what our strategy is. We’re going to win this election in early voting. We going to have a caravan of buses. We’re going to have vans called the Herenton Express. We’ll do an early voting like they have never seen before.”

And there was a warning: “Let me tell you why we have to overwhelm in early voting. In Memphis, with technology, they can steal the election. We’re going to win so overwhelmingly that they can’t steal this election. We need to come out in record numbers.”

Apologizing “for my emotionalism,” Herenton said, “I don’t know how to do a fake. I’ve just got to be real.” And, with another exhortation to “go back to our values,” he proclaimed, in the words of “that old church song we used to sing, ‘Victory is ours!’”

Altogether, a boffo performance. If Herenton can continue to generate energy on this scale, Strickland, opponent Tami Sawyer, and the rest of the 11-candidate field will have something to take very seriously.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three (Early) Thoughts on Tiger Football

Larry Kuzniewski


• How big is the Ole Miss game?
The Tigers can stack up wins in September and October, but whatever chances they have of cracking the Top 25 require beating the Rebels this Saturday at the Liberty Bowl.

Their three biggest tests in conference play will be the last three games of the season: at Houston (November 16th), at USF (November 23rd), and a home tilt against Cincinnati (November 29th). This weekend’s opener will have the largest crowd of the season, an early-afternoon (actually late-morning) television audience, and the opportunity for the Tigers to earn their first win over an SEC foe since the upset of 13th-ranked Ole Miss in 2015 (part of an 8-0 start that season).

There was a time — not that long ago — when SEC competition was senseless for the Memphis program. Not anymore. Mike Norvell’s vision of taking the Tigers new places includes trading blows, now and then, with the big boys. A win Saturday sets a tone for the 11 games to follow. A loss would be a scar come bowl season. (A win Saturday would mark the first time the Memphis program has won six straight season-openers.)

1995 Tiger Football Preview

I really miss Dennis Freeland this time of year. The former editor of the Flyer wrote on a variety of subjects — always with depth and a sense of connection — but he most loved his “side gig” of covering Memphis Tiger football. Dennis died much too young (at age 45, of brain cancer) in January 2002, eight months before DeAngelo Williams first carried a football at the Liberty Bowl. That’s a cruel twist to Dennis’s passing, but I’ve long felt he had a view of the NFL-bound tailback unique to the rest of us merely gawking in the stands (or press box). Dennis would be gawking, indeed, if he had lived to see the current Tigers, their offense having averaged more than 40 points a game two seasons in a row.

We first devoted a cover story to previewing the Tiger football season in 1995, the year Rip Scherer arrived to “chart a new course.” Oh, well. Some courses lead to 40 points per game, and some don’t. This week’s issue will be the 16th year in a row Tiger football has landed on our cover. It’s a partnership, of sorts, that we feel connects our readers to a special hometown team, one we — and in particular, Dennis Freeland — were covering when it wasn’t very cool.

• Why is attendance at Tiger games declining? The U of M averaged 43,802 tickets sold over six games in 2015, not coincidentally the last time the Tigers hosted an SEC opponent. Over the three ensuing seasons — all of them successful, one that finished with the Tigers ranked in the Top 25 — Memphis has averaged 37,346 . . . 33,307 . . . and 30,178. As Mike Norvell has built the most potent offense in the program’s history, fewer fans have chosen to see the records fall in person.

I have a theory — beyond Ole Miss visiting this season — that might contribute to the sagging attendance numbers: one too many games. Memphis hosted seven games each of the last three years. Even spread over three months, this gives fans a chance to say, “I’ll catch the next game” a bit too casually. With only six home games on the schedule this season, if you want to see Patrick Taylor climb the Tiger rushing chart one last time…you might want to make it this week’s game. And it’s a funky schedule, with only one home game in October and the two in November separated by 27 days. The Tiger players like to preach that the next game is the most important on the schedule. Same goes for Tiger attendance figures.

A quick fourth thought: The Tigers will go 10-4 this season. They’ll win the AAC West, lose the conference championship game (to Cincinnati), and win their first bowl game in five years.