For an argument built around which program needs to play the other more, it sure would be a shame to see the series slip away when both teams have so much going for them.
The Vols and Tigers first met in Oklahoma City in December 1969. It was another two decades before the next meeting, and at that point Memphis was rolling: seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 1982-89, including a Final Four in 1985. The Vols went dancing seven of eight years from 1976-83, but Don DeVoe’s squads struck out the next five seasons until one final appearance in his tenure in 1989, the same season Tennessee and Memphis began an annual series.
Tennessee won the first one that year 76-74, and the teams traded blows over the next four games, including a Vol win in the 1990 postseason NIT. Memphis won 74-72 in Knoxville in November 1990.
And then Penny Hardaway got two shots at the Vols. Tennessee won 65-64 in Memphis in December 1991. Back in Knoxville the following season with the Tigers ranked #8:
The rivalry survived Allan Houston vs. Penny Hardaway: Memphis won the next three, then the Vols won five in a row. The Tigers claimed a two point win in December 2001.
And then the series took a break after playing every year from 1988-89 to 2001-02.
The Turn of the Century
Older fans may have different and deeper reasons that fuel this rivalry. For Tennessee fans of my generation, who watched Houston beat Penny when we were kids? The animosity revolves around the arrival of John Calipari.
Penny’s 1991-92 squad made the Elite Eight. The Tigers were back in the Sweet 16 in 1995, then bounced in the first round in 1996. And then Memphis missed the NCAA Tournament four years in a row. Calipari, he of a vacated Final Four at UMass in 1996 and 2.25 years with the New Jersey Nets, became the new head coach at Memphis for the 2000-01 season. And the rivalry was almost immediately discontinued.
While Memphis was missing the NCAA Tournament four years in a row in the late 90’s, Tennessee ascended under Jerry Green. But much of the work was being done by Kevin O’Neill’s recruits, including highly coveted point guard Tony Harris from Memphis.
Meanwhile, the rise of Tennessee football to its most dominant era in program history happened to coincide with the basketball series being played annually. The Vols and Tigers met six times in the 1980’s in football: three in Knoxville, three in Memphis. That format continued into the 90’s, with the Vols winning in 1991, 1992, and 1994 before Memphis infamously beat the Vols in 1996 (a game we talked a lot about when Tennessee lost to Georgia State). It remains the only win Memphis has ever recorded over Tennessee in football.
The series took three years off, then resumed in what looks like a two-for-one fashion: games in Knoxville in 1999 and 2001, with a return to Memphis in 2000. By that point the Vols were regularly competing for the national title, and Memphis was still mired in misery: between 1972 and 2002, the Tigers never made a bowl game.
At the turn of the century, there was little reason for Tennessee to play a 50-50 home-and-home series with Memphis in football; the Vols’ national profile made it easy to recruit in West Tennessee even without being there every few years. Meanwhile in basketball, Tennessee made the NCAA Tournament four years in a row from 1998-2001 with Tony Harris at point guard, while Memphis was absent from 1997-2002.
With Calipari eager to rebuild the Tigers and keep Tennessee out of Memphis, and Tennessee football finding little motivation to play the Tigers six times in ten years, both series took a break: three years in basketball, four years in football. In that time, Buzz Peterson’s era found the Vols on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament, Tennessee football’s ceiling was lowered a bit, and Calipari got the Tigers going again: an NIT title in 2002, back in the NCAA Tournament the next two years, and the NIT semifinals in 2005.
A deal was struck to put the basketball rivalry back on an annual basis, with home-and-home football games in 2005-06 and 2009-10. Tennessee hired Bruce Pearl. And oh boy.
As Good As It Gets?
Calipari’s distaste for this annual rivalry wasn’t built on Memphis already arriving on the national scene: when the Vols and Tigers resumed on the hardwood in January 2006, Memphis still hadn’t made the Sweet 16 since 1995. But that changed immediately: Calipari’s Tigers made two Elite Eight’s, the title game, and the Sweet 16 in the next four seasons.
Meanwhile, Pearl resurrected Tennessee’s program immediately. Those first three games are memorable to this day: Pearl raising Dane Bradshaw’s hand at the scorer’s table in 2006, Chris Lofton turning in the single best performance I’ve ever seen from a Tennessee player in 2007:
…and, of course, 1 vs 2 in 2008:
Calipari’s Tigers won by two the following year in Knoxville, then he walked through that door to Lexington, Kentucky. At both Memphis and Kentucky, Calipari has been a vocal champion of playing anyone, anytime, anywhere…except, apparently, the Vols while at Memphis.
Interestingly, Calipari built a national power those last four years at Memphis with guys like Robert Dozier (Georgia), Chris Douglas-Roberts (Detroit), Joey Dorsey (Baltimore), Shawn Taggart (Richmond), Derrick Rose (Chicago), and Tyreke Evans (Pennsylvania). While the Tigers did have high-value recruits like Willie Kemp from Bolivar on their roster, most of their success came from recruiting on the national stage.
Meanwhile, Tennessee rose to power under Bruce Pearl during the same span with Memphis-area products Dane Bradshaw, Wayne Chism, and J.P. Prince.
The Fadeaway
The Vols beat Memphis by 20 in Pearl’s final season, then lost three straight before the contract was up, including a memorable double overtime affair in Maui in Cuonzo Martin’s first season. In seven seasons Josh Pastner made the NCAA Tournament four times, but never got out of the first weekend. The Vols made the Sweet 16 from Dayton in Cuonzo Martin’s final season, their only appearance in the tournament’s second weekend between the Elite Eight to open the decade and last season.
In football, Lane Kiffin’s Vols doubled-up Memphis 56-28 in 2009, then Tyler Bray got his first career start and win at Memphis in 2010, the beginning of a four-game winning streak to get the Vols bowl eligible.
Tommy West got the Tigers bowl eligible five out of six years from 2003-08, including a 9-4 season in 2003, but flamed out at 2-10 in 2009.
The decade since the last football meeting between the two schools has seen a shocking reversal of fortune. Justin Fuente’s arrival on the banks of the Mississippi in 2012 saw the Tigers go 4-8 and 3-9 in his first two seasons, then rocket to a 10-3 finish in 2014 and a #25 final ranking. The Tigers went 9-4 the following season, Fuente went to Virginia Tech, and Mike Norvell picked up right where he left off: 8-5, 10-3 with a ranked finish, 8-6, and now 12-1 this season with the coveted New Year’s Six appearance in the Cotton Bowl.
Here’s a list of the other bowl games in the history of Memphis football: Burley, Pasadena (not Rose), New Orleans, GMAC, Motor City, New Orleans, St. Petersburg, Miami Beach, Birmingham, Boca Raton, Liberty, Birmingham.
While the Tigers rose, Tennessee wandered through the wilderness. Since 2014, Memphis is 57-22; the Vols are 41-34.
Meanwhile in basketball, Pastner’s move to Georgia Tech brought two tumultuous years of Tubby Smith and no NCAA or NIT appearances. Tennessee watched Cuonzo Martin leave for California, then hired Donnie Tyndall before firing him with cause after one season, then went 15-19 and 16-16 in Rick Barnes’ first two seasons.
The Return
And then Memphis hired Penny Hardaway, and what we hoped we were getting from Rick Barnes arrived in full.
The Vols went 26-9 and won the SEC in 2018, then 31-6 including a month at #1 last season. Memphis went 22-14 and made the NIT last season, then Hardaway signed the nation’s number one recruiting class, including two four-stars and a five-star from Memphis. Two of those players, including James Wiseman, played for Hardaway at Memphis East.
So when this series was renewed last season as a three-year deal – Memphis, Knoxville, and next year in Nashville for the first time – it was unique in a couple of ways. One, there’s no football in the contract. Memphis has a home-and-home with Mississippi State and a two-for-one with Arkansas in the coming decade, but no Vols on the horizon.
But two, when the series renewed last December, balled fists or no…both the Tennessee and Memphis programs were on better footing than in 1989 or, as far as we knew at the time, 2006.
Pearl and Calipari were both on their way to great things in that initial meeting now 14 years ago. But we couldn’t be sure of either at the time. This time, the Vols have been one of the best teams in college basketball over the last two seasons and show no signs of leaving the Top 25, and Memphis has the nation’s best recruiting class.
I don’t know what Penny’s ambitions are – stay at Memphis forever, get to the NBA, or somewhere between – but it’s clear he can recruit at the level it takes to get Memphis where it needs to go. And it’s clear Rick Barnes can do the same at Tennessee, currently holding the nation’s #4 recruiting class for 2020 with one mid-state Tennessean and two others from Florida and Virginia. Jaden Springer chose the Vols over the Tigers.
When Barnes was asked this week about the future of the series beyond next year’s game in Nashville, he said:
“I think it’s been good for everybody…I think it will be good next year for us in Nashville. As your schedule opportunities come up, you’ve got to look at it and evaluate it.”
“You’re trying to get me to talk about things,” Barnes said. “Really, I don’t think about that. I told you, we’re going to build a schedule based on where and what we think is best. That’s all I can answer.”
And that’s the rub: where and what we think is best.
When Calipari took the Memphis job, playing Tennessee wasn’t best for business. Not because of what Memphis was at the time, or what Tennessee was, but because of who he was trying to get Memphis to be. When the series did resume in 2006, playing Tennessee wasn’t best for business because the Vols had struggled under Buzz Peterson and Memphis was looking to level up.
This notion that Tennessee has more to gain from playing Memphis than the other way around has always been at the heart of the matter for me, especially as Tennessee’s national profile rose under Pearl. The Tigers have spent the last 25 years in Conference USA and the American. In no individual season did it ever hurt their strength of schedule to play the Vols; far more often than not, it helped. Memphis got where they were going under Calipari by recruiting nationally, the Vols in part under Pearl by recruiting well in-state. Once Calipari left, the question could’ve been easily asked in reverse.
But now, having spent most of this decade apart, both Tennessee and Memphis are on excellent footing relative to both their expectations and recent history. For maybe the first time, we don’t have to have this argument about who benefits more.
It would be quite an opportunity missed, then, if both schools decide not to run it back after next season.
