Tag: University of Memphis Tigers

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Riding the News Cycle Rollercoaster

Photo: Aprescindere | Dreamstime.com

As I type these words, it’s Tuesday morning, September 21st. I’ve made several false starts on this column, looking over what I’ve written and deciding to start over.

I had hoped to use this space to acknowledge some high points for Memphis over the past week or so. I’m sure we could all use a moment to celebrate, and I don’t want to become one of those people who spouts anger or doom-and-gloom on a weekly basis.

The three-day mission of Inspiration4 marked the first all-civilian flight to orbit the Earth, and one of the crew was Hayley Arceneaux, a former patient of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and current St. Jude physician assistant. The mission raised $210 million for St. Jude. If that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

In other good news, the University of Memphis Tigers beat the Mississippi State Bulldogs at the Liberty Bowl last Saturday. I don’t know much about football, but people seem pretty excited about that turn of events. Go Tigers!

Also last weekend, I drove past the Luciann Theatre on Summer, its marquee lit up and glowing. The Luciann is the as-yet-undecided business making its home in the former site of the Paris theater, itself the former site of the former Luciann Theatre. Whatever confusion with names — or what the building’s eventual use will be — is, to me at least, secondary to the knowledge that a cool, old building in a too-little-celebrated part of town will be put to use instead of being torn down. William Townsend, the Luciann’s owner, discusses potential options for the space in a great Memphis Business Journal article, published last summer, by Jacob Steimer.

Memphian Carmeon Hamilton’s Reno My Rental premiered on discovery+ and HGTV on Saturday, September 18th, and seems to be getting a lot of well-deserved attention. I hope the show brings Hamilton all the support and success.

Finally, philanthropists Hugh and Margaret Jones Fraser and the Carrington Jones family of Memphis donated 144 acres to T.O. Fuller State Park.

So, yes, that’s all good news, and I think we should all take a moment to celebrate it.

But the news this morning is not so good, and I felt a little sick to my stomach trying to will the bad to the back of my mind in order to write more about the celebration-worthy successes I’ve mentioned above. Images have surfaced depicting U.S. Border Patrol agents chasing and apparently whipping Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. They are not pretty pictures. Men mounted on horseback seem to snarl at the barefoot men and women they tower over. It is as clear an abuse of power as I’ve ever seen, not to mention that it’s, put simply, inhumane. Seeking asylum is legal. It’s a basic human right, and it’s a foundational principle of this country. Or at least, we like to say it is.

The Department of Homeland Security has vowed to investigate. Meanwhile, Senator Marsha Blackburn has made hay, tweeting about the crisis, the security of the border, and that old standby, “The solution to ensure this doesn’t happen is to build the wall.”

I know that it’s how the political game is played, but there is something incredibly cruel about labeling human beings with nothing more than the clothes on their backs as “threats.” These are people, human beings. I don’t claim to have a solution, but pointing fingers at the U.S. immigration system when it’s time to fundraise without ever attempting to make it work for those who need it is no solution at all.

In other distressing news, The Tennessean’s Brett Kelman reports that Tennessee state government is recommending that the monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid be denied to vaccinated patients with the disease. This will not apply to vaccinated Tennesseans who are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed, which is one small mercy at least.

On the one hand, unvaccinated people who contract Covid are more likely to need that highly effective treatment. Of course, the surest way to prevent being hospitalized with a severe case of the disease is to be vaccinated. It reminds me a little bit of an unvaccinated friend who is helping several Covid-positive members of her church. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re taking precautions. We’re taking supplements.” Doubtless, those supplements are not approved by the FDA, but she refuses to take the Pfizer vaccine, which does have FDA approval. It does not make sense.

This week’s column has been a bit of a roller coaster, I know, but so has the last week. I hope we can all take a moment to acknowledge the good — and that it gives us strength to keep doing the work to make sure the good news is not ever in short supply.
Jesse Davis

jesse@memphisflyer.com

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on Memphis Tiger Football

CREDIT: Joe Murphy

• No Norvell, No Gainwell, No Crowd . . . No Problem.

The Memphis Tigers won their season-opener. It’s what they do — seven straight years now, after losing nine consecutive openers from 2005 to 2013. Star tailback Kenneth Gainwell shook up the roster by announcing his opt-out a week before kick-off, so sophomore Rodrigues Clark rushes for 109 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries. Offensive wizard Mike Norvell departed for Florida State, so Ryan Silverfield takes command of a team that tops 500 yards (yet again), converts nine of 17 third-down snaps and a fourth down via fake punt, defensive lineman Joseph Dorceus (?!?) scampering 25 yards to retain possession . . . with Memphis up 17 points.
Joe Murphy

Rodrigues Clark takes the ball from Brady White.

Oh, and the Tigers’ passing game seems to be in capable hands. Senior Ph.D. candidate Brady White completed 26 of 36 passes and tossed four touchdowns, in so doing becoming only the third Memphis quarterback with 60 touchdown connections. Damonte Coxie caught eight passes for 90 yards (ho-hum), but tight end Sean Dykes did his best Travis Kelce impression, hauling in 10 passes for 137 yards and a pair of scores. It all felt normal, formulaic even. A primetime win on national TV for the University of Memphis? We’ve been here before.

• Pandemic football stinks . . . but it’s the best we’ve got.

Football was made for television. From the dimensions of the field to the contrast and collision of uniform colors, the sport provides an aesthetic — if such can exist in a game so violent — unlike any other. But there’s a sadness to football in 2020, starting with the virtually empty parking lots as kickoff nears. And no sound system can replicate the noise of a crowd (even as “small” as 20,000) celebrating a big touchdown. The pandemic conditions are especially cruel for the Memphis program, which has seen nights when fewer than 10,000 people chose to attend a game. (The Larry Porter jokes were flying over social media last Saturday night.) Here’s hoping college football finds ways to safely and gradually welcome more fans to stadiums across the country. Seems like a long shot, and against the grain in a world where college students are studying as much from dorm rooms as lecture halls. But let’s hang on to hope. In the year we’ll remember as 2020, it’s the best and only approach.

• Arkansas State felt right . . . but the Tiger program can do better.

Not that long ago, it seemed like former Memphis coach Justin Fuente and I were the only men in town not interested in seeing an SEC program on the Tigers’ schedule. (The year was 2013.) It was nice to see the Red Wolves (merely a Sun Belt foe) back in town for the first time in seven years, but Tiger athletic director Laird Veatch should aim higher, and ambitiously. It’s a crime against Mid-South football culture that the Tigers haven’t played the Arkansas Razorbacks in 22 years. The programs will meet again, but not until we have a new U.S. president (one way or another), in the year 2025. Mississippi State will visit the Liberty Bowl next year, but Ole Miss has fallen off future Tiger schedules and Memphis hasn’t faced Tennessee in a decade. (Imagine what the Memphis winning streak might be against the Vols.) One of these four programs should meet Memphis every season. Could be an eight-year rotation (home and away for each). The marquee home game on this year’s Tiger schedule is UCF (October 17th), a legitimate conference rival for Memphis. But the kind of game that could fill the Liberty Bowl to capacity (remember those days)? Hardly.  

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From My Seat Sports

Dancing Days

CREDIT: Noren Trotman/NBA

The pandemic has turned the lights off when it comes to live sports, but we’re not entirely lacking sports drama. Not with The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part series on the six-time NBA champion Chicago Bulls of the 1990s. (Six episodes have aired to date, with two more this Sunday, and the final two on May 17th.) It’s fascinating journalism, and really only set in the world of sports. ESPN was able to give the Ken Burns treatment to a basketball franchise because of one transcendent human presence: Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Soak up all 10 hours, but you’ll be left with zero ambiguity when it comes to the most famous man of an otherwise ho-hum decade. And I find the reflection significant on two levels.
Noren Trotman/NBA

First of all, how many athletes would you give 10 hours of your life’s attention in documentary format? My short list: Muhammad Ali, Ted Williams, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, and Wayne Gretzky. I reached out to my Twitter pals and received the following submissions: Serena Williams, Jack Nicklaus, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Pete Rose, Tiger Woods. This kind of star power, in Jordan terms, is rarefied air. But quite honestly, those of us a certain age have read and heard the stories of Ruth, Robinson, and Ali, told well and told poorly. If John Goodman can play you in a movie, you take a backseat to Michael Jordan.

Rose and Woods are as infamous as they are famous (though both extraordinarily accomplished athletes, to say the least). Jordan, somehow, remains atop Olympus, even with his own shortcomings: that bizarre early-retirement-to-pro-baseball chapter, the gambling, the grudges. Similar to Erving, Jordan personifies cool when he walks in a room … but he won five more titles than did Doctor J. Back when posters were an actual thing, no one leaped from more walls than Michael Jordan. (I happen to own the finest Jordan poster ever printed, which I’m sharing with you here.) ESPN has reminded us that we have an actual living legend, one with juicy opinions on the likes of Isiah Thomas.

The second fascinating element of this mega-series is the temporal component. Jordan’s magnificence shone brightest before the Internet. He is the last sports great to do his thing before Twitter and Instagram could micro-analyze every achievement (or transgression) before sunrise the next morning. It took a book being written — printed pages! distribution! — for us to learn details about Jordan’s one-punch fight with teammate Steve Kerr during a Bulls practice. I’m not convinced LeBron James can ever achieve Jordan’s Olympian perch for the simple fact that his docu-drama has already been told, one tweet, gif, or meme at a time. (We had footage of James getting off a plane after learning of Kobe Bryant’s death before many of us learned of Bryant’s death.)

I’ve been in close proximity to my share of celebrities, and exactly three have given me goose bumps: Robert Plant, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Michael Jordan. I didn’t see Jordan play in person until he came to Memphis to play the Grizzlies in 2001 … in a Washington Wizards uniform. And that’s precisely the magnitude of Jordan: He could have walked onto the floor at the Pyramid in Baryshnikov’s tights or Plant’s bell-bottoms and he would have raised goose bumps. A legend among us. I’m grateful for the folks at ESPN reminding their younger audience that a standard was set for basketball greatness in the last decade of the twentieth century. I’m not sure it’s a standard that can be matched in this century or any century to come.


• The football revolution at the University of Memphis continues. When Antonio Gibson was chosen by the Washington Redskins with the 66th pick in this year’s NFL draft, it marked the third straight year a former Tiger’s name was called in the first three rounds. (Darrell Henderson was taken by the Los Angeles Rams in the third round last year, and Anthony Miller went to the Chicago Bears in the second round in 2018.) You have to go back more than 30 years to find a similar stretch (1985-87) for the Tiger program. All the more impressive, these are “skill position” players, the kind who make highlights on Sunday wrap-up shows. Win on Saturdays and a region will respect your college program. Help teams win on Sunday and the entire football-watching country will salute.
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Sports Tiger Blue

Pennyspeak

I’m growing rather fluent in Pennyspeak. If you’ve been listening to Memphis Tiger basketball coach Penny Hardaway since he took over the program 15 months ago, you’re likely speaking the language, too. It’s a refreshing alternative to “coachspeak,” the more typical say-one-thing-but-mean-another form of phrasing we hear every winter from coaches too timid to intimidate or too skittish to scare.

Having secured the top-ranked recruiting class in the nation after his first season as a college coach, Hardaway met with a group of media types last month to discuss the extraordinary group of talent on its way to Memphis. You may have heard what he said, but let’s go a little further: What did Hardaway want us to hear?


“What we’ve been able to do this summer is amazing. It’s a blessing. I wanted this so badly. To do this in such a short period of time . . . I thank God for the opportunity.”

Hardaway is grateful, indeed, to be making a difference, you might say, in his hometown, and at his alma mater. He also knows he’s very good at this recruiting game. God didn’t convince the country’s top recruit (James Wiseman) to stay home and play for the Tigers, and He didn’t persuade another five-star recruit (Precious Achiuwa) to play a supporting role to Wiseman. That was the man in the fancy suit and custom sneakers.


“They’re saying they’re gonna sacrifice — for one another — so they can all achieve the bigger goal.”

This is going to be micro-analyzed until Opening Night in November, and rightfully so: With only one basketball and 200 player-minutes per game, can seven freshmen stars co-exist? Don’t discount the role social media plays in the gathering of a modern college basketball team, the connectedness that can be achieved — at least in the minds of young men — before a team first assembles on a court. Wiseman, Achiuwa, Lester Quinones, and Boogie Ellis were sharing thoughts and views in a group chat long before the commitment letters were signed. Before they agreed to become teammates and play for Hardaway, they had to agree on the idea of being teammates, sharing a uniform, and yes, sacrificing some minutes on the floor for the greater good, the bigger goal. And do you wonder if these players recognized the fan support, the desire in Memphis to see this super-class become reality? Well, they did.

“This is Memphis. We don’t bluff. We want all the smoke. We want everything to be about Memphis. That’s what this city wants. We want to win a national championship.”

Forget incremental program-building under Hardaway. The Tigers haven’t won so much as a conference championship since the 2012-13 season. It’s now been five years without an NCAA tournament appearance for the Tiger program. But Hardaway is about now. He’d be a great spokesman for the mindfulness movement, the notion that scars of the past or possibilities of the future only interfere with being the best you can be right now. Make the next breath you take your most important. Make your next decision one of impact. And shy away from nothing. Those who lower the bar of expectations tend to stumble over that lowered bar.

“I’m different. We’re different. We’re an NBA staff . . . in college.”

There’s an arrogance to this, no question. The fact is, Hardaway is not coaching an NBA team. His assistants aren’t sharpening the skills of NBA players. But to win in the world of college basketball on the scale Hardaway wants to win, you better sell your program as a connector to The League. We may soon see the end of the “one-and-done” absurdity, a new era in which high school superstars can leap straight to the NBA if they choose (and are chosen). But there are only 60 selections made each year in the NBA draft. Do the math on that, with 347 Division I college teams and thousands of high school programs. It’s still hard to reach the NBA. Elite college coaches must establish themselves as conduits.

“It’s been like daydreaming, just thinking about the matchups you can put on the floor.”

Get used to the words positionless basketball. They may as well have been copyrighted by the Golden State Warriors. Ellis will be the Tigers’ point guard next season, unless the ball is in the hands of Quinones, or Tyler Harris, or Alex Lomax. Malcolm Dandridge may look like a power forward in warm-ups, but what do we call him when he’s the largest Tiger on the floor, when “small ball” becomes the mode of attack? And call James Wiseman a “center” if you want to sound like it’s 1995. Hardaway has so many options in distributing those 200 player-minutes on game night. Expect his rotation — to say nothing of his starting five — to be as fluid as the body of water rolling south just a few blocks west of his team’s arena. Rivers were made for daydreaming, right?