• 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).
