Well, here we are on the cusp of yet another Tiger football season, and Saturday afternoons with Tiger Lane full of flying footballs, firing grills and loud music.
The athletic department has done a phenomenal job upgrading Tiger fans’ experiences on game day with the new jumbotron, Tiger Lane and this year they even called in Bret Michaels to perform before a game.
The only improvement left is the play on the field – okay and maybe an on-campus stadium but that’s getting a bit greedy.
The Tigers finished last season 3-9, but they showed promise. This season, most Tiger fans have gone through the schedule and counted up six easily-winnable games A.K.A. a bowl berth.
I think that’s pretty fair, and I think Fuente does too. You could hear it in his voice at his press conference on Monday. You could hear it in his voice as he made it clear it was not him but the marketing department who came up with this season’s slogan: “Wait ‘til this year.”
As if every fan and radio program in the city wasn’t already, now the marketing department is putting the heat on for Fuente and company to win this season – not next season and not in two years. The time is now.
The Tigers can take their first step on Saturday. It’s a softball of a game. Austin Peay shouldn’t have any business being on the same field as the Tigers, but stranger things have happened. Like last season, Memphis lost their final game of the year in a blowout loss to a 2-8 UConn team.
However, Fuente can’t afford any strange things to happen on Saturday. He needs to win the game keep fans’ interest and try to sell to his team that it was a big win. If he loses that game, the floodgates will open, and Memphis football will go back to the laughingstock it was under during the “Join the Revolution” Larry Porter years just with a different slogan.
And they better enjoy this week because they travel to California next week to face seventh-ranked UCLA. Next, they play MTSU at home before traveling to Oxford to face 18th-ranked Ole Miss.
That’s not an easy stretch before opening up conference play against the top-two teams in the American Athletic Conference in Houston and Cincinnati. They have to make sure they get W’s against Austin Peay and MTSU, and hope for another win somewhere else. Then, they could enter their final six-game stretch with some wiggle room.
It’s the most experienced team Fuente has enjoyed during his three years in the Bluff City, and you can see them for the first time on Saturday at 6 p.m. at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium.
Just remember, it wasn’t Fuente but the marketing department who said, “Wait ‘til this year.”
