Memphis Tigers clawing for plenty in epic showdown with Ole Miss

Justin Fuente went to the default coachspeak mechanism when the question inevitably came this week. The question about how big Memphis’ home game is Saturday against Mississippi.

"This is the next game for us,” Fuente said at his weekly press conference. “Our kids will be excited to play and it's a tremendous challenge against a great opponent but it counts as one. It counts as one non-conference win or loss. Anything more than that is a little much for us right now. ... That does not mean we aren't going to gear up and prepare and do everything we can to be ready Saturday. But it's one game in a 12-game season.”

These are the lies coaches tell their players and the media. Yes, there is a kernel of truth within the deceit – the math says it is indeed 1/12th of the regular season. And yes, there is a method to the misdirection – mostly protecting against a massive letdown after the game.

But an undefeated Memphis team that is ranked in the USA Today Top 25? Playing 12th-ranked Mississippi? This is the first time a ranked Memphis team has ever played another ranked team, according to The Commercial Appeal. This isn’t just one game in a 12-game season. This is a giddy moment, a grand opportunity, a chance for Memphis football to do something that actually resonates.

There were students lined up at 6 a.m. Monday to get tickets, and athletic director Tom Bowen performed the obligatory duty of delivering donuts to the mob. For those familiar with the ennui that traditionally has enveloped Memphis football, it wasn’t a just-another-game scene.

So in an effort to bypass coachspeak and find someone more candid, I sought out longtime Commercial Appeal columnist and radio host Geoff Calkins. And I asked: biggest Memphis football game since ...?

“Infinity?” Calkins wrote in response. “Justin Fuente doesn't say this, of course. He says the conference games are bigger. And they actually are bigger than they usually are around here because Memphis could win the conference and qualify for the AAC championship game. But when you consider the potential national impact of this game, it's certainly bigger than the [2014] bowl game against BYU, or winning a share of the conference title last year at Temple, or anything like that.

[Play Yahoo Daily Fantasy and get a 100% deposit bonus with your first deposit]

“There have been other big Memphis games, and other big Memphis victories. The win over Tennessee in ’96. The back-to-back wins over Eli in '03 and '04. Wins at Auburn and at USC, and at Florida through the years. But most of those were one-offs. They were fabulous Memphis moments, but they didn't lead to or represent anything. This one feels different because of what has already happened and what could yet happen if Memphis wins.”

Calkins said there likely were two bigger games tucked back in Memphis history – both against Ole Miss, and both in the 1960s. But the landscape has changed so much in modern college football. The demarcation between Power Five and Not Power Five has created at least the perception of a great divide in Division I FBS. And Memphis is on the wrong side of the divide.

So is the rest of the American Athletic Conference – a loose confederation of tweener athletic programs that would love nothing more than to ditch each other and get an upgrade into a Power Five conference. (A wistful league turns its lonely eyes to you, Big 12, in the hope of expansion.)

But the American is a pretty good football league in 2015, blessed with a trio of up-and-coming coaches in Tom Herman of Houston, Matt Rhule of Temple and Fuente. And their teams are heading into a set of breakthrough chances this month to cross the divide – at least competitively, if not via the privilege of literal inclusion.

Unbeaten Temple, which whipped Penn State to open the season, hosts AP No. 14 Notre Dame on Oct. 31. If the Owls are 7-0 heading into that game, it would have to qualify as the biggest in school history. Opportunity.

On the same day, unbeaten Houston (No. 24 in the AP poll) hosts Vanderbilt. And while Vandy is not good, it is a Southeastern Conference program. And it is coming to Houston’s turf. Opportunity.

“Our teams have continued to get stronger and we have been able to hire and retain outstanding coaches,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said. “We have a roster of coaches that can rival anyone’s, and you can see the progress that we have been able to make.

“We have had some early success in the nonconference schedule and have some real opportunities to build on that in the coming weeks, especially now that some of these key games will be played at our home stadiums. Memphis should have a sellout Saturday for Ole Miss. Temple has already sold out its game against Notre Dame. Houston will have a great crowd when Vanderbilt comes in.”

First crack goes to Memphis on Saturday, at home, against Ole Miss. The two have met 60 times previously, between 1921 and 2014, and nobody outside the area ever noticed. But now there are actual stakes, and the Tigers have everything to gain against a school and a conference that epitomize the uphill fight Tigers football has eternally fought.

In terms of fan allegiance, Memphis is a bit Balkanized. There’s a melting pot of SEC fans – Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi State and plenty of Ole Miss, which is the closest SEC campus to the city. And then there is the hometown school – a traditional basketball power but a football orphan that is always right to stave off SEC poachers for the plentiful city talent.

Memphis is the gritty city school. Ole Miss is the leafy institution with the pretty campus and the prettier coeds. And some of its fans flaunt their SEC membership like a country-club brat who was born into that status rather than earning it.

“Here's how best to understand the Ole Miss [and SEC] dynamic in Memphis,” Calkins wrote to me. “Ole Miss fans call Memphis ‘Tiger High.’ So of course Memphis fans [speaking broadly] tend to dislike Ole Miss fans. They're so damn superior. And [a Memphis fan may add] what are they so superior about, exactly? Existing as a perpetual bottom-feeder in the SEC? It's one thing to be treated dismissively by Alabama fans. But Ole Miss?

“Of course, that's just the stereotype. And only some of it is real. That dynamic is the one you'll find on message boards. In real life, people work together, go to church together, pull for the Grizzlies together just fine. Indeed, there was a great deal of mutual respect between [coaches] John Vaught and Spook Murphy, who started the series. Vaught didn't call Memphis ‘Tiger High.’

“Finally, it's kind of nice, for both schools, that the game means something.”

It means a lot. And if Memphis should win it, Justin Fuente might even admit as much.