Winning the American Athletic Conference was something that, in the preseason, few thought was possible and virtually no one expected; however, the Memphis Tigers find themselves with an 83.9 percent chance of winning the conference championship, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index rankings (FPI).
This ranks as the second-highest among all FBS teams behind only Georgia Southern. It is remarkable to think about truly just how far this football program has come in just three short seasons.
Head coach Justin Fuente made a decision last season to start redshirt freshman quarterback Paxton Lynch over senior Jacob Karam, who was coming off of a strong finish to the 2012 campaign, and that decision has begun to pay dividends for Fuente and his staff.
Lynch, who has thrown for 2,121 yards, 11 touchdowns and rushed for another seven, has made tremendous strides between his freshman and sophomore seasons and now has the Tigers is some unfamiliar territory. Memphis has won just four conference championships in football: three Missouri Valley Conference titles (left the MVC in 1973) and one Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association title (SIAA dissolved in 1942).
Winning the AAC would be the biggest football accomplishment in the last 40 years, to say the least.
Coach Fuente has stuck to his plan all along. Even when some wavered in confidence through some of Lynch’s freshman struggles, Fuente stuck by his young quarterback for he knew taking a few bumps and bruises along the way was just part of developing young quarterbacks.
With three games remaining in the regular season, Memphis has a realistic chance at not only a conference title, but also a 10-win campaign—something that even the DeAngelo Williams-led teams never accomplished.
According to the FPI, the Tigers have a 71.1 percent chance of winning their remaining three games, and they play the 119th-toughest remaining schedule (out of 128 FBS teams). Winning out would put the Tigers at 9-3, a win total that has not been seen since 2003, and even then it took a win in the New Orleans Bowl to get to the nine mark after an eight-win regular season.
Most Tiger fans look back at the early days of the Tommy West era as some of the golden years of Memphis football, and rightfully so. Between 2003-2008, the Tigers went to five bowl games, and the team had arguably the greatest player (in terms of college production) in program history with DeAngelo Williams. (Isaac Bruce is the greatest Tiger player in terms of NFL success.)
But this team has the chance to accomplish feats that even the great Tiger teams of a decade ago could not.
Memphis fans should take pride in the fact that rumors have begun to swirl in regards to how much longer it will be before Fuente is scooped up by a bigger program. While it is never fun to have to replace a coach, they are not replacing him because the program is in the dumps, rather because the program has been taken to unprecedented heights.
And who is to say the Fuente will not be around for years to come? The guy has it pretty good at his current gig, and it would take a school of rich football tradition to pry him out of Memphis.
But regardless of what happens with Fuente in the offseason, everyone should be excited about the way the football program has preformed this year on the field, and they should be encouraged and optimistic about what the future holds for Memphis.
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