Blog

Memphis Tigers are on the Verge of History

Memphis takes on SMU at 11am on Saturday, Nov 17th with a chance at history.

Win this game, and the Tigers will have done something that only 3 Memphis teams have done since they started keeping records for Memphis State University in 1960.

They will have won 9 games in a season.

That’s with East Carolina left on the schedule.

I’m sure you assumed I would be talking about the berth in the American Athletic Conference Championship game.  Because a win Saturday also sets that up.

Memphis would have a chance to win their first outright conference championship since 1969 – when they won the MVC, which, at the time, had only 6 teams, and Memphis did not even play one of the schools.  This would be the first legit conference championship in the school’s history.

So let’s dive in to the rest of this – if Memphis beats SMU, they will be 9-1 with a home game against East Carolina, a conference championship game against Central Florida or South Florida, and a bowl game.

Currently, Memphis has 8 wins.  Only 10 times, since 1960, has the Memphis football team won 8 or more games in a season.  This is the 11th.

If Memphis beats SMU, that makes 9 wins, which has only happened 3 times, since 1960.

If Memphis beats SMU and East Carolina, that’s a 10-1 record.  10 wins in a season has only happened once – 2014 under Justin Fuente.  And that took a bowl win over BYU (including the brawl afterwards) to get there.

Here are the other seasons where that’s happened:

8 win seasons

  • 2016: 8-5 (Mike Norvell)
  • 2004: 8-4 (Tommy West)
  • 1973: 8-3 (Fred Pancoast)
  • 1969: 8-2 (Billy Murphy)
  • 1962: 8-1 (Billy Murphy)
  • 1961: 8-2 (Billy Murphy)
  • 1960: 8-2 (Billy Murphy)

9 win seasons

  • 2015: 9-4 (Justin Fuente)
  • 2003: 9-4 (Tommy West)

10 win seasons

  • 2014: 10-3 (Justin Fuente)

 

On top of the number of wins in a season, Memphis is also in a position to reach Bowl Heights they never have before.

Here are the only 9 bowl games the Tigers have been to since 1960.

If the Tigers win their next 3 games – 2 of which they will be favored in (SMU & East Carolina) and 1 they won’t (UCF/USF) – they will be heading to the Peach Bowl at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan 1st, 2018.

That will be, by far, the biggest bowl game in Tigers history.

It all starts with wins though – and they have to get the win over a good SMU team at the Liberty Bowl on Saturday morning for that to be a possibility.

Gary Segars

Gary began his first website in 1998 as a sophomore in high school, writing reviews of cds and live shows in the Memphis area. He became editor of his college newspaper, then moved towards a career in music.He started the infamous MemphisTider.com blog during the 2006 football season, and was lucky enough to get into blogging just before the coaching search that landed Nick Saban at Alabama. The month and a half long coaching search netted his site, which was known for tracking airplanes, over 1 million hits in less than 90 days. The website introduced Gary to tons of new friends, including Nico and Todd, who had just started the site RollBamaRoll.com.After diving into more than just Alabama news, Gary started up his first installment of WinningCuresEverything.com in 2012. After keeping the site quiet for a while, it was started back up in April 2016. Gary then joined forces with high school friend Chris Giannini and began a podcast during the 2016 football season that runs at least 2 times a week, focusing on college football, NFL football, and sports wagering, and diving into other sports and pop-culture topics.E-mail: gary@winningcureseverything.com Twitter: @GaryWCE