Tag: Memphis vs. Cincinnati

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on the AAC Championship

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

• For the third straight season, the Memphis Tigers will play on college football’s biggest, most exclusive weekend. Seventy-eight teams will play in bowl games over the next five weeks. But only 20 get to play for a conference championship on the first Saturday in December. Aside from the New Year’s Six, you can have “bowl season.” I’ll take the weekend all 10 FBS leagues decide a champion on the field. And for the first time, one of these games will be played here in Memphis, at the Liberty Bowl.
Larry Kuzniewski

Bryce Huff

The Tigers celebrated their division title last Friday, clinched with the victory over Cincinnati. But it’s the American Athletic Conference championship — to be decided on the field, against those same Bearcats — that would take the Memphis program a place it’s never been before. Coach Mike Norvell made that clear in describing the minimalist approach to last week’s celebration. “There have not been a ton of trophies lifted around here,” said Norvell after his team’s 11th win of the season (a program first). “Winning the West Division is pretty special. To represent where this program has grown, the foundation former players built . . . we want to celebrate it. But we’re not done. We did what we’re supposed to do. I want us to continue to grow. I want to see that hunger. We can talk about the ‘three-peat’ of winning the division, but we want to finish the journey.”

• Championships are won, yes, with line play. When the Tigers score their first touchdown (or field goal) Saturday, they’ll surpass 500 points for the fifth straight season. It’s a scoring total the program never reached before the 2015 campaign. You could say Memphis has established not so much an offensive scheme, but an offensive system, the kind that rolls over, one generation of players to the next. But when I consider the strength of this year’s Tiger offense, the record-breaking numbers of Brady White, Kenneth Gainwell, Antonio Gibson, and Damonte Coxie are merely the dressing. The meat of this juggernaut has been an offensive line as strong and stable as any the U of M has ever suited up. From left to right, they are Obinna Eze, Dylan Parham, Dustin Woodard (the senior center made his 50th start last Friday), Manuel Orona-Lopez, and Scottie Dill. Remarkably, this group has started all 12 games for Memphis, well-nigh impossible for a position tasked with creating collisions on every snap of every game. The unit will lose only Woodard at season’s end, meaning the Tiger offense — the Tiger offensive system — is in a good place for 2020 and beyond.

• Back-to-back Bearcats . . . big deal. In each of the Tigers’ previous two appearances in the AAC championship, they faced a team they’d played in the regular season (UCF). I don’t see the proximity between the Tigers’ regular-season game against Cincinnati with Saturday’s championship to be all that significant. Sure, familiarity breeds contempt and all that, but this is football. One play from scrimmage is usually enough to breed contempt. After Friday’s win, Coxie talked about talking, and the blocking he and his fellow Tiger receivers enjoy, and how much defenders don’t enjoy it. “I like to get in [defensive backs’] heads,” said Coxie, on the verge of his second-straight 1,000-yard season. “They don’t like to be touched.” He didn’t sound like someone concerned about what this week’s opponent heard — or felt — in last week’s game.

The Tigers beat Cincinnati without playing their best football. They failed to capitalize (and score) on a pair of Bearcat turnovers. The Memphis defense allowed the Cincinnati offense to stay on the field too much (eight third-down conversions and one on fourth-down). Saturday’s game will likely come down to which team plays better in the second half. And the cliche holds: Mistakes lose games (and championships). A team celebrated all season for its ability to execute a game plan — and minimize mistakes — will need to hold form in one more home game, with the prize likely a berth in the Cotton Bowl. Memphis football going places it’s never been before. Again.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Power of One Man

It is amazing to see how one man is able to create such joy. He attracted thousands upon thousands of people of all races and religious backgrounds to galvanize around a common ideal. His followers clapped and cheered with the ecstasy that comes with the release of long-held, pent-up emotion, and everyone seemed so happy. A record number of people watched him this week on national TV. Even longtime doubters who had previously lost faith are returning to the fold in record numbers. No, I’m not talking about Pope Francis. I’m talking about Justin Fuente.

Did you see that game? I haven’t seen a shoot-out like that since Waco. Of course, I’m talking about the Memphis Tigers’ 53-46 win over Cincinnati last week. It was all you could ask for in a football game: 45,000 screaming fans, lots of scoring and suspense, thrilling long runs and acrobatic catches, and a key interception to end the game. What a way for the Tigers to make their national television debut.

The Liberty Bowl wasn’t packed out, but I’ll bet it will be soon. The Fuente-coached Tigers were 7-17 after the first two seasons. Now they’ve won 11 in a row and are averaging almost 50 points a game. I’ll leave the stats to Geoff Calkins, but most impressive for me is that the Tigers are 4-0. The last time the Tigers went 4-0 was in 1961, and risking the revelation of my decrepitude, I was there.

My father took me to the games of the then-Memphis State University in Crump Stadium when I was a child. That’s where I first learned to hate the Confederate flag. Ole Miss fans would come to town with lots of swagger and would take over the Peabody Hotel. They were drunk and obnoxious and treated Memphis like a home game. In the stadium, they would wave a sea of Stars and Bars flags and sing “Dixie” after every touchdown, with Colonel Reb smiling from the sidelines. The roar of that “Hotty Toddy” cheer still rings in my ears. It was among the first uses of public profanity heard in the South, and parents covered their children’s ears before the revolting Rebel fans yelled, “by damn!”

The Memphis side of the stands responded with thundering chants of “Go to hell, Ole Miss, go to hell!” Dad didn’t object, so I guessed it was alright in this context. What amazed me most was my father’s reaction to a Memphis State touchdown. Not ordinarily a demonstrative man, he would leap to his feet, look at me, and holler, “whoo hoo hoo,” several times in a row. I always found it interesting that he had such enthusiasm when it wasn’t even his school. He just adopted the Tigers and passed the custody on to me.

Billy “Spook” Murphy was coach in 1961, and the quarterback was the “golden boy,” James Earl Wright. I always smiled when I thought of what his monogrammed shirts spelled. Wright was injured, and the torch was passed to Central High graduate Russell Vollmer. Both men have since been inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame. With Vollmer as quarterback, the Tigers went 26-3-1 in three seasons.

Any old-timer can see the comparisons to Paxton Lynch. There’s a problem, unfortunately, with Coach Fuente. How you gonna keep him down on the farm after he’s seen the national spotlight? There’s no question that he’s already in demand at major colleges with huge football budgets, but since this is Fuente’s team, wouldn’t it be nice if he stayed in Memphis and built a powerhouse?

Of course anything can happen, and like most fans, I’m not looking past the University of South Florida. But with an electrified fan base in Memphis, Ole Miss better watch their ass next time they come to town. And, oh yeah, the Pope was a winner too.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

My Choice for Memphis Mayor

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

Justin Fuente

Early voting has begun, and I’ve made my choice for the next mayor of Memphis.

My pick for mayor is an up-and-comer who loves a challenge. What some might call “the worst job in the country,” he calls an opportunity.
He balances a lot of responsibilities at his current high-pressure job. But he manages and delegates effectively. He and a few assistants oversee a team of about 90 people, most of whom are only high school-educated.

He hasn’t been in Memphis long, but his outsider perspective means he’s not cynical and defeatist.

He’s not above working on weekends – in fact, he lives for a Saturday at the office.

Sorry A C, Jim, Mike, and Harold. Maybe next time, Mongo. There’s one man who has shown he has the guts, vision, and leadership to tackle seemingly insurmountable odds and effect real, positive change.

His name is Justin Fuente. He coaches the University of Memphis football team.

I know what you’re probably thinking, and, at first, I didn’t believe in him either. I even called him “another ‘who’ hire instead of a ‘wow'” the day it was announced he’d been selected to coach my alma mater’s embarrassment of a football team. I don’t remember whom I preferred at the time, or why I even thought anyone else would be crazy enough to take the job, but I will happily admit I was wrong. With the success Fuente has had here, I’m more inclined to call him a genius or a wizard than a coach. If he can fix Memphis football, let’s see what else he can do.

If Coach Fuente can transform the Memphis football program from trolley fire to conference champion in just three seasons, I’d like to see what he can do for Memphis Animal Services. Did you see that reverse flea-flicker Paxton Lynch threw Saturday at Bowling Green? That demonstrates that Fuente’s not scared to get creative and make bold decisions, a strength I would like to see him apply in addressing the city’s issues with blight.

We talk about attracting and retaining talent to the city, and so far he seems to have done a pretty good job with that. Just imagine the positive attention the city will get if Memphis beats Ole Miss this season. If that happens, we should bypass the mayor thing and crown him King of Memphis for life eternal so he never moves on to a “bigger” job. What better gig is there than king?

I’m sure he’d decline, deflecting the praise onto his players and assistant coaches. But it would backfire, because that kind of humility is another leadership quality that would make him a perfect mayor and/or king of the city. Shoot, bring the staff along too. City Council, start packing your things. I’d offer the players something too, but I’d hate for some NCAA violations to interfere with these good-time feelings in Tiger Nation.  

Former U of M athletic director R.C. Johnson used to say “It’s a great day to be a Tiger,” and it made me cringe every time. But we can finally say without irony that these are halcyon days indeed for Your Memphis Tigers, who have started the season 3-0 for the first time since 2004. That means they’re already halfway to bowl eligibility for the second year in a row, with a  fairly friendly schedule ahead. They’ve won 10 straight games for the first time since Kennedy was president. That’s good for one of the longest winning streaks in the country. In football! Can you believe it? It still feels a little like Bizarro World to me.

For others, it feels too good to be true. Every postgame show, at least one caller asks: “How long before somebody snatches him up?” “What happens when he’s gone?” “What do we have to do to keep him here?” How typically and hilariously Memphis is that? “Things are going great, so we should probably start preparing ourselves for when it all inevitably goes to hell.”

I understand. Sports fans in this town have been burned before. But I promise it’s OK. If I had a dollar for every time a fellow alum told me “I love Tiger basketball, but I root for (insert SEC school here) in football ’cause … you know …” I could upgrade my season tickets. Now? They’re complaining about having to work in the morning after attending Thursday night’s Cincinnati game. The train’s on the tracks (literally, it’s on Southern just south of the stadium), and it’s moving in the right direction. Enjoy it.

Jen Clarke is an unapologetic Memphian and a digital marketing strategist.