Justin Fuente went to the default coachspeak mechanism when the question inevitably came this week. The question about how big Memphis’ home game is Saturday against Mississippi.

"This is the next game for us,” Fuente said at his weekly press conference. “Our kids will be excited to play and it's a tremendous challenge against a great opponent but it counts as one. It counts as one non-conference win or loss. Anything more than that is a little much for us right now. ... That does not mean we aren't going to gear up and prepare and do everything we can to be ready Saturday. But it's one game in a 12-game season.”

View photos Coach Justin Fuente is doing great things at Memphis. (Getty) More

These are the lies coaches tell their players and the media. Yes, there is a kernel of truth within the deceit – the math says it is indeed 1/12th of the regular season. And yes, there is a method to the misdirection – mostly protecting against a massive letdown after the game.

But an undefeated Memphis team that is ranked in the USA Today Top 25? Playing 12th-ranked Mississippi? This is the first time a ranked Memphis team has ever played another ranked team, according to The Commercial Appeal. This isn’t just one game in a 12-game season. This is a giddy moment, a grand opportunity, a chance for Memphis football to do something that actually resonates.

There were students lined up at 6 a.m. Monday to get tickets, and athletic director Tom Bowen performed the obligatory duty of delivering donuts to the mob. For those familiar with the ennui that traditionally has enveloped Memphis football, it wasn’t a just-another-game scene.

So in an effort to bypass coachspeak and find someone more candid, I sought out longtime Commercial Appeal columnist and radio host Geoff Calkins. And I asked: biggest Memphis football game since ...?

“Infinity?” Calkins wrote in response. “Justin Fuente doesn't say this, of course. He says the conference games are bigger. And they actually are bigger than they usually are around here because Memphis could win the conference and qualify for the AAC championship game. But when you consider the potential national impact of this game, it's certainly bigger than the [2014] bowl game against BYU, or winning a share of the conference title last year at Temple, or anything like that.

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“There have been other big Memphis games, and other big Memphis victories. The win over Tennessee in ’96. The back-to-back wins over Eli in '03 and '04. Wins at Auburn and at USC, and at Florida through the years. But most of those were one-offs. They were fabulous Memphis moments, but they didn't lead to or represent anything. This one feels different because of what has already happened and what could yet happen if Memphis wins.”

Calkins said there likely were two bigger games tucked back in Memphis history – both against Ole Miss, and both in the 1960s. But the landscape has changed so much in modern college football. The demarcation between Power Five and Not Power Five has created at least the perception of a great divide in Division I FBS. And Memphis is on the wrong side of the divide.

So is the rest of the American Athletic Conference – a loose confederation of tweener athletic programs that would love nothing more than to ditch each other and get an upgrade into a Power Five conference. (A wistful league turns its lonely eyes to you, Big 12, in the hope of expansion.)

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