Rising Memphis is focused on big game and bigger future

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

In the most recent era of major conference realignment, the University of Memphis' athletic ambitions were sabotaged at every turn by the school's flimsy commitment to football. For all of its basketball success over four decades, its passionate local fan base and its generous corporate support through Memphis-based shipping giant FedEx, the negative perception of Memphis as a major conference candidate was fueled by its longstanding inability to get football right.

But just a handful of years after sinking to depths that made some fans wonder whether the program should be eliminated, the Tigers have finally gotten football right under a rising star coach in Justin Fuente.

Memphis, which shared the American Athletic Conference title last season and beat BYU in the Miami Beach Bowl, carries a 3-0 record and 10-game winning streak into Thursday night's nationally televised game against Cincinnati (ESPN, 7:30 p.m. ET), which is big enough on its own. But for school officials, just as important is capitalizing on the moment and laying the groundwork for Memphis football to be taken seriously should a realignment opportunity — say, the Big 12 — present itself in the next few years.

"We're the best fit for the Power Five, period, and my colleagues and everybody (in the industry) knows it," athletics director Tom Bowen told USA TODAY Sports. "We've had to build it one game at a time, and finally after three years of pushing the envelope we're in the perfect position. Thursday night is a defining moment for the University of Memphis. It's a celebration for the city, the university and all of us and it's the work of Coach Fuente. It's amazing what he's done. From my standpoint we will benefit immensely because we're going to be everywhere Thursday night."

It's unclear when the next round of realignment might take place or what might spark it, but most of the national speculation has centered on the Big 12, whose 10-team format has come under scrutiny both internally and externally since last season when it got shut out of the College Football Playoff.

Should the Big 12 expand at some point, Memphis could argue it fits the league geographically, sits on prized recruiting turf and would allow the league to plant a flag in the heart of SEC country. It's almost certainly not a coincidence that on the same late June day Oklahoma president David Boren expressed his preference for the Big 12 to add two teams, second-year Memphis president David Rudd Tweeted a digital drawing of the $40 million athletic facilities project (including an indoor practice field) that will be completed during the next two years.

"David Rudd is a rare, rare guy," Bowen said. "It's really good to be a Tiger right now."

But even as Memphis wins games, pours resources into football and touts recent upgrades to Liberty Bowl Stadium, it is hard to shake the perception created by decades of neglect and ineptitude.

Though Memphis has had periods of moderate success and interesting one-off achievements — the Tigers upset Peyton Manning's Tennessee team in 1996 and Eli Manning's Ole Miss team in 2003 — nothing has ever sustained. Fred Pancoast won games in the early 1970s and left for Vanderbilt. Rex Dockery died in a plane crash after he turned around the program in 1983. Tommy West once took Memphis to three consecutive bowl games but got fired a few years later, delivering an all-time rant about lack of investment in the program on his last day of work.

Given how little Memphis had done to position itself for success, it's no surprise that during the realignment wave of 2010 and 2011 — seasons in which it sunk to 3-21 under alum and former LSU assistant Larry Porter — it was stuck without any hope of being invited to a major conference.

But with Fuente engineering one of the most remarkable program turnarounds in recent memory and a new, ambitious administration, the perception is slowly changing. And like its former Conference USA rival Louisville, which used weeknight games as a springboard to build its brand, Memphis hopes that a national audience will tune in Thursday and see a legitimate football program with 50,000 in the stands and a product that could one day fit in a power conference.

"I think it's a great opportunity for everybody, not just our program but the city, this community this university and obviously our program as well to put on display who we are and what we're about," Fuente said. "Hopefully we'll go out there and play the game the right way, play hard, smart and tough, which is kind of what we try to hang our hat on here and try to preach to our kids and show people how we try and play the game."

And though surely at some point in the telecast, ESPN announcers will talk about whether Fuente might leave for a bigger job after this season, investment in the program has at least given it a chance to sustain success regardless of the coach. It's also worth remembering the same speculation followed Fuente's mentor, Gary Patterson, until at some point he didn't need to leave TCU to get a major conference job.

"This is all about Coach Fuente and his men, and we're all benefiting from his ability and guys playing really, really hard every Saturday, and we're making leaps and bounds," Bowen said. "We reworked his contract, he and his wife are very happy, he never talks about it and he gets irritated when guys start pushing (about other jobs). We're very happy to have him."

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