Tag: University of Memphis Football

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on Tiger Football

• With the program’s newfound success, the Tigers — and their fan base — will have to learn how to process something new: costly defeat. It’s hard to imagine more riding on a single kicked football than the one lifted toward the goalpost by the U of M’s Jake Elliott with 19 seconds left in last Saturday’s game at Houston. If that ball splits the uprights, the Tigers avoid a dispiriting blown lead, remain in contention for the AAC’s Western Division title, leap up the Top 25 rankings (perhaps switching spots with the Cougars, at the time ranked 16th), and cling to what little hope remained for the “Group of Five” slot in a New Year’s Six bowl game. The football, of course, flew wide right, erasing all those positive scenarios and leaving Memphis with its first two-game losing streak since the end of the 2013 season. Making the miss especially cruel for Elliott, it would have made him the third Tiger to score 300 career points. He remains at 299 entering this week’s game at Temple. We need only go back to last year’s win at Temple or the Miami Beach Bowl to remember how clutch Elliott — twice named first-team all-AAC — has been with a win at stake. If the Houston loss lingers, watch the Tiger defense over the last quarter, and forget that failed field-goal attempt. Here’s hoping another game rests on the right foot of Mr. Elliott.

• Mose Frazier is in the final stretch of what has become a terrific career at Memphis. With four more catches, the pride of Whitehaven High School will become the first Tiger with 60 receptions in a season since 2011. His 121 career receptions rank seventh in U of M history and with six more, he’ll climb to fifth. Frazier has 1,461 career receiving yards and, with three games to play (counting a bowl game), could climb as high as sixth in this category. Most impressive, Frazier has embraced a committee of talented wideouts utilized in the Tiger attack the last two seasons. Ten Tigers have at least 100 yards receiving through ten games. Wide receiver is the easiest position on a football field to become selfish. Frazier has served as an example not just for his talents downfield, but for his strengths as a teammate.

• In both 2013 and 2014, the Temple game served as a thumbprint for the Tiger season. Two years ago, the Owls came to Memphis in late November trying to find their way (like the Tigers) and delivered a 41-21 beatdown at the Liberty Bowl. Combined with another blowout loss a week later at UConn, the Tigers had to reconsider what was possible with the roster as Justin Fuente had built it. Then last fall, when Elliott drilled his game-winner as time expired in Philadelphia, the Tigers found themselves 6-3 and bowl-eligible for the first time in six years. They would not lose again on their way to a 10-3 campaign.

Now this Saturday (again in Philly), the Tigers and Owls find themselves sharing outstanding, though recently disappointing, seasons. Temple started 7-0 and entered the Top 25 for the first time in a generation before losing two of its last three games (to Notre Dame and USF). You know the Memphis story: An 8-0 start, ranked 15th in the land, then consecutive losses to Navy and Houston. By one significant measure, Temple has more to play for than does Memphis. If the Owls win their final two games (they finish with UConn), they’ll represent the Eastern Division in the first AAC championship game. But the Tigers need to end a losing streak, and can play the role of spoiler Saturday afternoon. A Temple loss would drop the Owls into a tie with USF atop their division if the Bulls beat Cincinnati Friday night. Put it this way: the loser of Saturday’s game will be reeling. We have the makings of a good cross-divisional rivalry here.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

ThreeThoughts on Tiger Football

• Navy ruined our chance to see a battle of unbeaten Top-20 teams this Saturday in Houston. Even so, the Memphis-Houston game is the biggest clash in the three-year history of the American Athletic Conference. It will be the first time a pair of AAC teams ranked in the Top 25 face each other on the gridiron. It will also be a showdown between the top two offensive players in the league (at least as measured by total offense). The 25th-ranked Tigers are led by quarterback Paxton Lynch (356.2 total yards per game) while the 16th-ranked Cougars have Greg Ward Jr. under center (327.2). Ward has a decent chance to finish the season with 3,000 yards passing (he currently has 2,116) and 1,000 yards rushing (829), meaning Saturday’s game could weigh heavily in the AAC Offensive Player of the Year race. Two ranked teams — combined record of 17-1 — playing in cities that each have NBA teams in the Southwest Division, led by star quarterbacks and two of college football’s hottest coaching commodities (the Tigers’ Justin Fuente and the Cougars’ Tom Herman). This is about as good as November football gets.

• The late, great Dennis Freehand had an opinion about the start of college basketball season, as it relates to college football. The former Flyer editor felt the two enterprises damage one another by overlapping in November. Why not start the college hoops season after college football’s regular season is complete? Come Saturday night, there will be a lot of Tiger fans — those devoted to football and men’s basketball, at least — who will agree with my longtime colleague’s sentiment. With the nationally televised Memphis-Houston game kicking off at 6 p.m. and the Tigers and Southern Miss tipping off the 2015-16 basketball season at 7 p.m., there will be empty seats at FedExForum that would otherwise have been occupied. (My duties as a reporter will have me at FEF for the basketball game, though I will miss some action with glances for updates from Houston.) This will be the first time since 2003 that the Tiger basketball team’s home opener coincides with a Tiger football game. Twelve years ago, the football team beat Cincinnati at the Liberty Bowl to improve to 8-3 while the basketball bunch beat Fordham by 30 points.

• The Tigers are making significant renovations to the football record book. Last week against Navy, the Tigers became the third team in program history to score 400 points in a season (last year’s team was the second). With his first-quarter touchdown strike to Anthony Miller, Paxton Lynch became the second Memphis quarterback to throw 50 career touchdown passes (Danny Wimprine threw for 81 over his four seasons with the U of M). This Saturday in Houston, another pair of significant marks could be met. Lynch will break the single-season passing yardage record (3,220 by Martin Hankins in 2007) with 207 yards against Houston. And if he scores 11 points, kicker Jake Elliott will become the third Tiger to score 300 career points (after Stephen Gostkowski and DeAngelo Williams).

Categories
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
From My Seat Sports

Tennessee: Planet Football

CREDIT: Frank Murtaugh

Frank Murtaugh

Football is alive and well in the state of Tennessee. As though this needed verification, I gave myself to America’s favorite spectator sport last week, soaking up the experience at three distinct levels — high school, college, and the NFL — in four days. Following are the lingering impressions, the sounds of whistles and colliding shoulder pads still echoing in my ears.

• Last Thursday, along with more than 45,000 fans (almost all of them wearing blue), I watched from the Liberty Bowl press box as the Memphis Tigers won a game that may prove to be the most significant in the program’s history. Surely you know the details by now: Memphis 53, Cincinnati 46. Eleven lead changes, 12 touchdowns, more than 1,300 yards of combined offense from the teams picked to win their divisions of the American Athletic Conference. All in front of a national TV audience thanks to 12 ESPN cameras.

Frank Murtaugh

The most significant win in Tiger history? If the University of Memphis aspires to be a member in one of college football’s Power Five leagues, it must develop a national impression as a “football school.” Define this however you will, it’s a far cry from any impression the U of M has made on the country . . . until Thursday night. The Tigers are 4-0 and have won a school-record 11 consecutive games. Should they beat USF this Friday (and they’ll be favored), they’ll host mighty Ole Miss on October 17th in what could be a battle of undefeated Mid-South teams, each eyeing a New Year’s Six bowl game. It just keeps getting better under fourth-year coach Justin Fuente (now 21-20 on the Tiger sideline). Memphis a football school? We’re getting there.

• Friday night, I went to the Fairgrounds to take in the White Station-Bartlett game. (Disclosure: My daughter is a junior outfielder for the Spartan softball team. I had rooting interest.) There’s a corny charm about high school football under the lights, even in a city the size of Memphis. Fans (read: families) of one team sit on one side of the field, fans of the opponent occupying bleachers on the other side. Cheerleaders do their thing in front of the student section, right next to the school band, every member counting the minutes till halftime and their turn in the spotlight. The p.a. announcer takes time to inform the crowd a car in the parking lot has its lights on.

As for the football, it’s charmingly small. Many linemen barely clear 200 pounds. The kicking games are a shallow imitation of what you see in college stadiums. (Every punt is in danger of being blocked, and a 35-yard field-goal attempt is a stretch.) There are no names on the back of uniforms. (“Number 9 for the Panthers is shifty once he gets through the line of scrimmage.”) A week after scoring six touchdowns, Spartan star receiver Dillon Mitchell didn’t play, apparently nursing a minor injury suffered in practice. (Another charm: No one seemed to know exactly why the star player was sidelined.) White Station won, 17-0, to improve to 4-2 on the season. As the crowd left around 9:30 (12-minute quarters are glorious), the win seemed to mean everything. Come Saturday, life’s distractions would return.

• I grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, and did not attend a single “Tennessee Oilers” game during the one-season layover (1997) the NFL had in Memphis. My interest in the Tennessee Titans over the years has been that of a native and resident of the state, and little more. Sunday’s tilt with Indianapolis at Nissan Stadium in Nashville was my first NFL game since a trip to Dallas in 2007. (This completed a bucket-list achievement of sorts for me, as this is the first calendar year I’ve attended games in the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL.) And the experience left me with two distinct impressions.

First of all, the women. If the crowd — more than 65,000 — wasn’t half female, at least 40 percent of the fans at Nissan stadium were missing a Y chromosome. (One of them was new Nashville mayor Megan Barry, sworn in just two days earlier.) For a sport overstuffed with testosterone and traumatic injuries, there is a tremendous segment of “the fairer sex” passionately devoted to the enterprise. Sitting right next to me was a woman at least 50 years old . . . and her mother. Not a man in the mix. I find this compelling because of all we here about dads and particularly moms unwilling to subject their sons to football’s violence. If so, these moms seem perfectly willing to cheer on someone else’s son.

Then there were the video boards. Behind each end zone at Nissan Stadium is what amounts to a television that runs the entire width of the field. The screens are so big, and the images so clear, that it felt at times like the watch party of the century . . . just with 22 men down on the field occupying themselves with something or other. Football, we know, is made for television. Even at NFL stadiums on Sunday.

The game? It was memorable. Making his home debut, Tennessee’s rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota led the Titans to 27 unanswered points after the Colts took an early 14-0 lead. But the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner tossed a fourth-quarter interception that allowed Andrew Luck and friends to retake the lead. Mariota led another comeback, but rookie fullback Jalston Fowler was stuffed on a two-point conversion attempt with 47 seconds left, giving Indianapolis a 35-33 win.

I’m told there was something called a Blood Moon Sunday night. It must have been in the shape of a football.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Arghhh!

Every year, when it’s time for our Memphis Tiger football cover story, I jokingly threaten to make the cover an image of Lucy from “Peanuts” pulling the football out from under Charlie Brown, as the poor fellow yells, “Arrghhh!” But that would be wrong.

The Flyer has a history with Tiger football that dates back to the early 1990s, when then-editor, Dennis Freeland, began covering the games in a weekly column and writing preseason cover stories about the team. Freeland truly cared about the program and wrote about it with dedication and tempered affection.

Just prior to Freeland’s sad passing in 2002, publisher Kenneth Neill, a longtime Tiger football fan, took on the job of covering the team’s games for a year. Perhaps his most memorable moment came in a column after a Tiger loss to lowly University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB), in which he bemoaned “losing to a bunch of pissants.” Needless to say, UAB Pissant fans were not amused, though it’s certainly a better team name than Blazers.

Since then, Frank Murtaugh has covered Tiger football and basketball for the Flyer. This week’s issue is his 11th preseason football cover story. He covered the Coach Tommy West “glory years,” when the team went to five bowls in the mid-2000s; he covered Coach Larry Porter’s sad-trombone “revolution,” when the team won three games in two years. (In one of his more foolish moves, Porter famously built a wall around the program’s practices and kept the media at arm’s length.) Foot, meet bullet.

When current coach, Justin Fuente, was hired three years ago, the hope was that the team would soon turn things around. Fuente has gone 7-17 in his first two years, in the process losing to such traditional powers as Middle Tennessee, Tennessee-Martin, and Temple. Attendance is lagging, cynicism about the program abounds. But hope springs eternal: The university’s slogan for the 2014 season is “Wait ‘Til This Year!”

That audacious slogan aside, it’s a football program that direly needs wins — and fans. So when the Flyer, which has covered the program for 20 years, asks for a few minutes with the coach or a couple of players for a cover photo for a story coming out the week of the team’s home opener, you’d think that program would be falling all over itself to cooperate.

But no. No posed photos allowed, says the university. Seriously? With 200,000-plus weekly readers, the Flyer is the second-largest print medium in Memphis. Wouldn’t a snazzy, clever Tiger football cover in hundreds of Flyer racks and boxes all over town help get people excited about the season? Might it not even put a few more butts in seats in the cavernous Liberty Bowl on Saturday? Come on, son, think. The Crimson Tide, you’re not.

I swear, if the team doesn’t win and/or lighten up on its photo policy, next August, I’ll be the one saying “Wait ’til this year, Charlie Brown.” And they’ll be the ones saying, “Arrghhh!”

Categories
Opinion

Watching Sports Requires an Iron Butt

Off2.jpg

Notes from a heavy sports weekend:

Time required to watch a professional tennis match in a major tournament: Four hours. Time required to watch a major-college or pro football game from start to finish: Four hours. Time to watch a football game, tailgate, and drive to and from: Eight hours.

Tennis first. The Novak Djokovic semifinal Saturday went five sets and tested the stamina of the fans as well as the players. Today’s U.S. Open final between Djokovic and Rafael Nadal looks like a potential four-hour affair because the players are evenly matched, they hang tough in long rallies, and they take their time when it is their serve. I preferred the Serena Williams match in the women’s final Sunday because it was best of three instead of best of five. It went the distance, and was over in about two and a half hours, including a close tiebreaker in the second set and some face time for lean-and-grey Bill Clinton who got the biggest celebrity ovation of the day. The second set was suspenseful because it was a potential decider with multiple match points. In a five-setter, the early sets are often just building blocks to the good stuff in the fourth or fifth sets — like the first three quarters of an NBA game. Walk the dog time, make a sandwich time, get a life time.

Now for football. A week ago I was in Nashville to visit a friend who went to the Vanderbilt-Ole Miss game. The game was a thriller, with hot action in the last few minutes, but all my friend could talk about was how long it took to get to that point: an 8:15 p.m. kickoff dictated by ESPN, a game crammed with television timeouts, and a conclusion well after midnight.

Four hour games are the norm. Super Bowls used to be completed in less time. I watched part of the Michigan-Notre Dame game at Jack Magoo’s sports bar Saturday. Another screen was showing other, lesser games at the same time, and I would swear there was twice as much action in the lesser games and twice as many commercials in the big game. What a pay day it was for Michigan and Notre Dame, with 115,000 people in the stands in Ann Arbor and a national television audience. And what a late night for fans who sat through the whole thing and had to drive home after it was over.

There was a very good crowd, by recent University of Memphis standards, at the Liberty Bowl Saturday for the opener against Duke. In fact, it seemed to overwhelm the parking lot attendants on Central Avenue and the concessions in the stadium, where at least one of them ran out of cold soft drinks at half time. You can see why Memphis football boosters keep giving it a go. The upside is considerable, and the infrastructure is already there — the big stadium, the jumbo scoreboard, the parking lots, the access streets. If there were 35,000 people there Saturday, that’s 25,000 more than most games drew the last few years, at roughly $50 a head for tickets, parking, and concessions including $7 beers. Lot of money changing hands. If Memphis ever uncovers another DeAngelo Williams . . .

It’s water under the bridge, but the stadium renovation mandated by the U.S. Department of Justice to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) looks so unnecessary. ADA seating now basically encircles the stands at the middle level. Most in evidence within my view on the west sideline were, in order, empty spaces, fans in portable companion chairs, fans in walkers, and fans in wheelchairs. The DOJ, which strong-armed Memphis into compliance and expansion, should take a more scientific survey.

Categories
Opinion

College Football Spending/Revenue, Part 2

stadium.jpg

After looking at football expenses and revenues for the USA Today preseason Top 10, I was curious to see the numbers for the 12 teams that will play the University of Memphis this season.

Duke, Cincinnati, Louisville, and South Florida made money. Connecticut and Central Florida lost money, and the rest, including Memphis, reported breaking even or virtually even.

Not surprisingly, the gap between the elites and the struggling teams in Division 1-A such as Memphis is huge — the bigs spend two or three times as much and make tens of millions of dollars in profits. The only Top 10 team on the Memphis schedule this year is Louisville, which is the model for Memphis as it attempts to be a breakout program. Memphis has enough ingredients — big stadium, southern location, Top 50 television market, major-league status, wealthy boosters — to sustain, as Frederick Exley wrote in “A Fan’s Notes,” the illusion that fame is possible.

The figures from the U.S. Department of Education are for the 2011-2012 academic year. Expenses come first, followed by revenues and, in some cases, a comment or two.

Memphis: $12,983,962, $12,983,962. Tigers spend and earn $7.5 million on men’s basketball.

Duke: $20,480,154, $25,373,768. Duke spent $16 million and earned $25.6 million on bball.

Middle Tennessee: $7,629,932, $7,629,932.

Arkansas State: $4,341,626, $4,341,626. Under former coach Hugh Freeze, Tigers’ nemesis did more with less than just about anyone.

Central Florida: $13,636,867, $12,211,638. Lost money.

Houston: $8,250,249, $8,250,249. Also-ran and relatively small spender in a big wealthy market in Texas.

SMU: $13,163,600, $13,163,599. Not a typo, the Mustangs lost a buck.

Cincinnati: $12,594,857, $15,322,430. Money maker.

Tennessee-Martin: $2,599,061, $2,699,094. Low budget Division 1-AA school made $100,000.

South Florida: $12,609,350, $16,832,236. Nice profit in crowded Florida market.

Louisville: $18,769,539, $23,756,955. Not bad, but men’s basketball made $42.4 million on $15.4 million spending.

Temple: $16,961,995, $16,961,995.

U. Conn: $14,445,521, $12,910,583. Lost money playing some big boys.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post gave the wrong location for the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Categories
Opinion

College Football Top Ten and Expenses/Revenues

alabama.jpg

At last. It seems like forever since the college football season ended in January. Seven agonizing months later, the USA Today preseason coaches’ poll is out, and national champ Alabama is on top.

Alabama is also the biggest spender in the Top 10, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s website on spending in college athletics. The Crimson Tide spent almost $37 million on football and earned $82 million. Not bad, but not best either. The University of Texas, which didn’t make the preseason Top 10, had revenue of $103,813,684, while Michigan had $85,209,247. Notre Dame, which is ranked 11th and lost to Alabama in the 2013 national championship game, earned $68,986,659 and is a football independent.

Most bang for the buck? That would be Georgia and Florida, each with more than $3 in revenue for every $1 spent. Most likely to improve this season? That would be Texas A&M and quarterback Johnny Manziel, the newest member of the Southeastern Conference, which earned a paltry $44 million last year.

(The University of Memphis reported football expenses of $12,983,962, balancing out revenue of $12,983,962. The only Top 10 team on the schedule this year is Louisville.)

Here’s the Top 10, with expenses and revenues in parentheses. Remember, football players are student athletes and academics comes first.

1. Alabama ($36,918,963, $81,993,762)
2. Ohio State ($34,026,871, $58,112,270)
3. Oregon ($20,240,213, $51,921,731)
4. Stanford ($18,738,731, $25,564,646)
5. Georgia ($22,710,140, $74,989,418)
6. Texas A&M ($17,929,882, $44,420,762)
7. South Carolina ($22,063,216, $48,065,096)
8. Clemson ($23,652,472, $39,207,780)
9. Louisville ($18,769,539, $23,756,955)
10. Florida ($23,045,846, $74,117,435)

Categories
Opinion

“Holy Crud:” U of M Academics, Athletics in National Spotlight

Dasmine Cathey

  • Dasmine Cathey

A University of Memphis football player with poor reading skills is in the national spotlight in stories in the Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times this week.

Dasmine Cathey, a fifth-year senior from Ridgeway High School, is the focus of the story by Brad Wolverton and the Times column by Joe Nocera.

Nocera writes: “As an incoming freshman, Cathey could barely read, and academics remain a chore. His papers — a handful of which are posted on the Chronicle’s Web site — seem more like the work of a seventh grader than a college student. Among the courses he has failed are Family Communication and Yoga. His major is called “interdisciplinary studies.” As the article ends, the athletic department’s academic advisers are desperately trying to get him to go to class so he can graduate.”

Wolverton’s story quotes the assistant athletic director for academic services, Joseph Luckey: “I was like, ‘Holy crud, I can’t believe how many kids are reading below a seventh-grade level,'” he says. For Mr. Luckey, the question is how many of those students to let in. “What we’ve all got to decide,” he says, “is what’s our breaking point?”

Outgoing University of Memphis Athletic Director R. C. Johnson is interviewed in the Flyer this week. On the subject of academics, he tells Flyer writer Frank Murtaugh: “When I got here, the NCAA didn’t publish graduation rates. But our rate [for athletes] was in the low 30 percent. Now, we’re in the 60 percent range. I feel good about where we are. The NCAA has raised the bar. We’ve gone from two to seven full-time academic employees. Bottom line: You’ve got to go to class. When you have to ask someone for a dollar, it’s a lot easier when you’re graduating your athletes.”

Categories
Opinion

Exclusive: Actual 2011 Attendance at Liberty Bowl Stadium Was 100,000 Less than “Announced”

empty-baseball-stadium.jpg

The University of Memphis opened the 2011 football season at home against Mississippi State before an “announced” crowd of 33,990 and ended the home season against Marshall in front of an “announced” crowd of 15,101 in 62,000-seat Liberty Bowl Stadium. The actual numbers, however, were 26,398 for the opener and 3,301 for the Marshall game.

The most recent AutoZone Liberty Bowl drew an “announced” 57,000 and an actual 31,578. And the 2011 Southern Heritage Classic announced 43,532 while actual attendance was 26,398. (Pure coincidence that this is the same number as the Tiger opener, according to Memphis Division of Parks Director Cindy Buchanan and her assistant, who provided and double-checked the numbers at The Flyer’s request.)

According to Buchanan, total attendance for the eight games at the stadium last year was 120,300, compared to the sum of the “announced” attendance of 221,002 by the stadium’s three tenants.

It is common knowledge that announced attendance, which includes tickets sold and distributed but not necessarily used, is often inflated. It is also common practice among colleges and professional teams and the media outlets that follow them. What is not so clearly known is the gap between reporting and reality. It’s a downer, and it does not endear reporters to the people and organizations they must report on.

The gap is especially relevant now in reference to Liberty Bowl Stadium. Tenants and boosters say the stadium needs an upgrade, and the Memphis City Council and city taxpayers may be asked to shoulder some of the costs. The tenants have also told Councilman Reid Hedgepeth that they will bear at least half of the costs of the upgrades and are aware of the city’s financial predicament.

In other words, it’s time to look at real numbers. The games are an important part of the local sports scene and, even at the low number, bring thousands of out-of-towners to Memphis and help put paying customers in hotels and restaurants. At the same time, however, a ticket that is distributed but unused does not contribute to the stadium ambience, concession sales, or parking revenue. And the city gets a share of the latter two.

On March 20, the City Council must decide how much public support should be pledged to upgrading the stadium. Hedgepeth said the tenants would provide specific numbers then. Actual attendance should be among them.

Here are the numbers Buchanan provided for each game: AutoZone Liberty Bowl, 31,578, Southern Heritage Classic, 26,398; Mississippi State, 26398; Austin Peay, 9,198; SMU, 9,208; East Carolina, 7,128; UAB, 7,127; Marshall, 3,301.