It’s Time for Memphis Football to Embrace the Underdog Role Again

Preseason prediction polls are exactly that — prediction polls. They’re useful to generate conversation between now and the official start of the season, one can gauge national perception from them, and on occasion, they’re good for a little humor (Vanderbilt received five votes to win the SEC last week).

For the fourth consecutive year since winning the American Athletic Conference in 2019, Memphis was not picked to win the conference at AAC Media Days on Tuesday. In prior years, being picked fourth, specifically behind a team that has never appeared in an AAC Championship game (SMU) and a first-year AAC program (UTSA) may have been looked at as a slight by those around the Memphis football team. This year, however, Memphis knows that it has everything to prove. When asked about the preseason ranking, Memphis Head Coach Ryan Silverfield told media members that, quite frankly, “we have not earned the right to be picked much higher” than fourth in the league.

Memphis is one of the few remaining in-conference programs that has experienced all that the American Athletic Conference has to offer. They’ve won the conference twice, knocked off numerous P5 programs, hosted College Gameday, and appeared in a New Year’s Six bowl. Perhaps those achievements are what keeps Memphis consistently projected in the top-half of the league. In a college football world that focuses on “what have you done for me lately”, however, the Tigers need to reaffirm in 2023 that they’re still a top-tier G5 school in the college football landscape.

Throughout most of AAC Media Days, Tulane and UTSA were the two most highly-discussed programs amongst media members, and rightfully so. The Green Wave proved in 2022 that, after being picked seventh in the 2022 AAC preseason poll, all the “talk” drifts away once the pads start knocking in the fall.

Memphis is taking the right approach heading into 2023 — they’ve not earned anything. With only three members remaining on the roster from that historic 2019 team, the 2023 Memphis Tigers will look to build upon the blueprint set in 2019 rather than clinging to it.