Under various names, the University of Memphis has fielded a football team since “West Tennessee State Normal School” was first established in 1912. Excluding a four-year hiatus during World War Two, the Tigers (also briefly known as the Warriors) have logged 109 seasons of play as an Independent, in the Mississippi Valley Conference, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, Conference USA, and currently the American Athletic Conference.
With one game remaining in the regular season, Ryan Silverfield and the Tigers have an opportunity to win 9 games in a season for just the tenth time in program history. While returning to the American Athletic Conference Championship game was openly the top priority amongst coaches and players, the team can still go down in the program record books as being the fifth team in program history to reach a 10-win season with a bowl victory in December. In doing so, Ryan Silverfield would join former Tiger coaches Allyn McKeen (1938), Justin Fuente (2014), and Mike Norvell (2017 & 2019) as the only coaches to win 10 or more games in a season at Memphis. Former Memphis head coach Mike Norvell holds the record for the highest winning percentage in Memphis football history with a W-L percentage of .704; followed by Billy “Spook” Murphy (.697), Fred Pancoast (.621), and Ryan Silverfield (.617).
Coming just days after the massive news regarding the Simmons Bank Liberty Bowl renovations and better-than-expected potential bowl berths, Ryan Silverfield still has an opportunity to enter the off-season with positive momentum. To do so, the Tigers will first have beat the Temple Owls in Philadelphia for the first time since former Tiger Jake Elliott and company won in walk-off fashion in 2014. Ironically, the Tigers would go on to finish 10-3 that season with a victory over BYU in the Miami Beach Bowl. That season, which was Justin Fuente’s 10-win year, gave the Tigers their first bowl win since 2005 and the building blocks to start the 2015 season off going 8-0.
The 2024 season will mark Ryan Silverfield’s fifth year as head coach and ninth overall in the Memphis program, moving him to the fifth-longest tenured head coach in program history. First arriving on staff in 2016, only Billy Murphy and Tommy West have served on a Memphis football staff longer than the current Tigers’ lead man.