The Memphis Tigers desperately need a rivalry game. With no regional SEC foe (Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Arkansas, Tennessee) on this year’s schedule, the closest we’ll see are UAB and Tulane, a pair of teams in green to wrap up the regular season. The Tigers host the Blazers Saturday night, then travel to New Orleans to face the Green Wave on Thanksgiving.
How can you identify a “rivalry game”? There’s buzz in the stadium before kickoff. Something no one saw, heard, or felt at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium with the likes of North Texas, Charlotte, or Rice on the other sideline. Consider that Memphis has the chance to go undefeated (7-0) at home without seeing a crowd as large as 26,000. Can “The Battle for the Bones” fill the stadium? UAB is still a young program, so this will be just the 17th meeting between the teams (Memphis owns an 11-5 advantage). But that massive bronze rack of ribs is one of the coolest rivalry trophies in the sport. It would be memorable to see the likes of Seth Henigan or Chandler Martin try and lift it. Hey, Tennessee beat Alabama this season. It’s a chance for the Volunteer State to seize some bragging rights with emphasis.
• The Tigers’ next win will make Ryan Silverfield only the fifth head coach to win 40 games with the program. That’s a small number of men for a relatively small number of career wins. What does it say about Silverfield’s place in Memphis football history and, more importantly, the current state of the Tiger program? It feels like that proverbial glass is both half-empty and half-full. Memphis is bowl-eligible for an 11th consecutive season. Write that sentence as recently as 2010 and you’d be laughed out of the room. Silverfield is the only coach in Tiger history to win three bowl games. On the other hand, it’s been five years now since Memphis appeared in the American Athletic Conference championship game. All the yearning to be part of a “power conference,” and the Tigers can’t win their own second-tier league. And when you can’t sell out a 33,000-seat stadium in a city the size of Memphis, relevance is an issue.
I’ve been watching the program long enough to remember six consecutive losing seasons under the same coach (Rip Scherer). The Tigers’ current streak of 37 consecutive games with at least 20 points? Not that long ago (1994-96), Memphis went three seasons with only seven such games. There has been some truly bad football played in these parts even if we subtract two seasons of pure misery under coach Larry Porter. So I find it hard to tear down an 8-2 campaign (so far), a team with a chance for another 10-win season, and a coach who seems to care about his program’s place in Memphis (the city) as much as its place in the AAC standings. If you’re not among an elite dozen programs — you know them — it’s hard to win championships in college football. Staying competitive (game-to-game and year-to-year) should matter.
• With merely 30 passing yards this Saturday, Memphis quarterback Seth Henigan will move into 20th in FBS career passing yardage. (He’ll pass longtime San Diego Charger Philip Rivers.) And with 545 yards over his last three games, Henigan would become only the 15th quarterback to top 14,000 yards. For a dose of perspective, Peyton Manning passed for 11,201 yards in his four seasons at UT. Among those 15 signal-callers in the 14,000 club, only eight of them played just four seasons of college football (Hawaii’s Colt Brennan played only three). It’s a reminder of Henigan’s singular career in blue and gray. Oh, and with four more touchdown passes, he’ll be the first Tiger to reach 100.
