AAC title would ‘mean everything’
They’re going to drive through the night.
Five of them will pile into a Dodge Dart starting at 6 p.m. Friday, once 23year-old University of Memphis fan Brandon Bumgarner gets off work at the Bass Pro Shop Sunglass Hut on Macon Road.
And they won’t stop, aside from maybe a detour to Whataburger, until the 12-hour, 830-mile trip to Orlando is done.
They hatched this idea moments after the Tigers beat Houston last week at the Liberty Bowl, when Bumgarner looked around at his friends and asked a straightforward question.
“Are we ever going to have this opportunity again?”
There’s a growing sentiment around college football that the power brokers of the sport should do away with conference championship games. They’ve outlived their impor-
tance, the critics say, and the opening round of an expanded College Football Playoff could instead be played during this week.
It’s a reasonable proposal that would create a more level playing field for schools like Memphis, if only because of how unfair the current setup is to Group of Five conferences, who don’t appear to have any shot of qualifying for a four-team playoff even if they have teams that go almost two seasons and 24 games without a loss.
But to say these championship games don’t matter anymore fails to take into account the emotions Memphis and its fan base got to feel this week, after the Tigers authored a remarkable turnaround this season.
What’s at stake for Memphis
When Memphis takes the field Saturday to face UCF in the American Athletic Conference championship game for the second straight year, the Tigers won’t be playing for a playoff spot, or even a New Year’s Six bowl game.
There will be, however, a sense of history looming over the proceedings, a sense that one more win and the program’s first outright league title would further validate what’s been accomplished over in recent years.
“It’d mean everything ... not only just for the game, not for the trophy, but for the journey, the story, the legacy,” Memphis coach Mike Norvell said this week. “The things we’ve learned about ourselves this year through adversity, those are the success stories you want to be a part of. It’s been a heckuva journey.”
Of course, this wonderful hypothetical can’t occur unless Memphis finally slays UCF. The two teams will meet for the fourth time in 14 months, and the Tigers have beaten the Knights just once in 13 tries all-time — in 1990, before UCF became a Division I program.
UCF remains the only AAC team Memphis football doesn’t have a win over during its five-year transformation from laughingstock to legitimate. But the Tigers have also given UCF its two closest calls during a national-best 24-game win streak.
First, there was the double-overtime classic in last year’s AAC championship game. Then came last month’s 31-30 loss in which Memphis squandered a 17-point lead.
“We had them beat both times and we just killed ourselves,” Memphis cornerback T.J. Carter lamented this week.
The Knights enter Saturday at No. 8 in the CFP rankings, and so Memphis has the chance to score its biggest win since upsetting No. 6 Tennessee in 1996. The unfortunate season-ending injury to star UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton makes this scenario appear more realistic than ever before.
Like last season, there’s also a chance this championship game is the last time Norvell coaches a game for Memphis. He’s once again mentioned as a candidate for just about every Power-5 conference head coach opening.
The good news is it feels like less of a threat than a year ago because of the caliber of schools looking for a coach and the fact that Memphis made Norvell the highest-paid coach in the Group of Five when he signed a five-year extension last December.
How Memphis repeated as AAC West champion
But to focus simply on what the ending to this season could look like would be a disservice to how Memphis reached this point again.
The Tigers mostly lived a charmed life a year ago, stockpiling wins until two excruciating losses late.
This season, they started out 1-3 in AAC play. They lost to teams they shouldn’t have and got blown out going into their bye week. They had to find a completely different identity on offense. They had to reel off four straight wins and get help from the rest of the league to clinch another division title.
Norvell said, looking back, he wouldn’t change any of that adversity “because of the growth I’ve seen from this team.”
It’s why quarterback Brady White said this week what he’ll remember most about this year is “everyone counting us out, doubting us, talking smack.”
It’s why Carter will remember this group’s “perseverance, how bad we started, and how we responded,” he said.
It’s why Bumgarner and his friends will trek 12 hours to Orlando and then turn back around again as soon as the championship game is over.
It’s why Memphis fans everywhere should make sure to savor every minute of this.
“To be able to win the West division, that was a great thing and something we’ll always celebrate,” Norvell said. “But to be able to go and to capture it all, to win the American Conference against the opponent that we have to face, oh it would be an incredible moment.”