Memphis football is operating like it never could before this offseason | Giannotto

The teenaged offensive lineman said into the camera that he liked Memphis football because it’s going to the ACC. He said it without a hint of sarcasm or baggage from the decade-plus of false starts and empty promises the university has endured in conference realignment. He said it as if someone from Memphis said it to him that and he believed it.

“They’re building,” Peyton Joseph told the recruiting site On3.com recently.

Welcome back to Memphis football’s offseason moment, brought to you now by a boost from FedEx.

Joseph would have never considered the Tigers even a year ago. Probably wouldn’t have been talking to them at all. He’s considered one of the 10 best interior lineman in the country in the 2025 recruiting class, but he’s high school teammates in Georgia with Antwann Hill, Jr., a four-star quarterback prospect and former Deion Sanders commit at Colorado, who’s also considering Memphis.

Perhaps they’re ready to confound well-worn expectations like Tennessee’s leading tackler from 2023 just did. Linebacker Elijah Herring announced his transfer to Memphis last week, a rare move across state for a player coming off the season he had in Knoxville.

But these suddenly seem like rare times for Tigers football.

Overlooked and underappreciated, especially before the past decade, Memphis football is suddenly operating in a manner we haven’t seen before, and with the kind of financial heft only seen in men’s basketball traditionally. The Tigers aren’t a power conference team, but they’ve got the spending power to match some of them.

Ryan Silverfield, already a strong recruiter before FedEx infused $25 million in NIL money for Memphis over the next five years, is wielding it by chasing players his predecessors never had a shot to get.

It used to be once an SEC team was involved with a player – like really…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/memphis-football-operating-never-could-100656256.html

Author : The Commercial Appeal

Publish date : 2024-05-16 10:06:56

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