Memphis-Houston is a tale of American sprawl

The American is enjoying a very successful college football season. Saturday night, a city known for its urban sprawl will appropriately host the game that might mean more to the AAC than any other in 2015.

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Just chew on that last sentence for a bit. There’s a lot to take in. First, Houston is the city which will host the game in question. The city is a representation of American sprawl. The participants in Saturday’s game are the homestanding Cougars, unbeaten and undaunted, and the once-beaten Memphis Tigers. That much you already knew.

However, what is this business about Memphis-Houston meaning more to The American than any other game in 2015? Won’t the league’s first conference championship game mean more? Won’t Memphis-Temple next week mean even more, given that it’s a cross-division matchup?

Good questions. Let’s explain.

The notion of “sprawl” is part of it.

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American sprawl is something I’ve personally seen in Phoenix, the city of my birth. I haven’t been in Houston beyond the airport, but people who live there tell me it’s a very spread-out city. This basic idea of being hard to contain, spilling out in all sorts of directions, is the perfect way to capture Memphis-Houston, a game which might not mean as much to the AAC in 2015 as that first league title game on Dec. 5, but which might mean more to this conference in the long run, five or 10 or 15 years from now.

The American — also known as the American Athletic Conference — is stepping into a new world this season, not just with the league title game, but with Navy as a new member. The presence of the Midshipmen in a conference after more than 130 years without one has given the Midshipmen a national boost. That rise in publicity is being sustained by the continued conversations about the College Football Playoff and the New Year’s Six, chiefly in connection to the questions about how Navy’s game against Army on Dec. 12 might change the playoff and NY6 dynamics for various teams and conferences. Our newest writer here at TSS, Yesh Ginsburg, wrote about the AAC’s three-team divisional tiebreaker. 

It’s a mess, but The American is getting a lot of attention, and most of it is still good. Why? A lot of quality teams exist in the conference.

Four squads — the Memphis and Houston sides which will square off on Saturday, plus Navy and also Temple — all carry legitimate New Year’s Six aspirations into week 11 of a college football season. That’s pretty special. If it hasn’t been easy to contain Houston’s growth as a city over the past few decades, it’s fairly hard to contain The American’s growth as a football conference.

See why Houston is the perfect city to host a game of such consequence, with Memphis coming to town?

Just wait — there’s a lot more to the story than you might think.

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Memphis-Houston could affect The American for many years — not just for the 2015 race and the pursuit of a New Year’s Six bowl — because the coaches in this game are hot commodities. Justin Fuente of Memphis and Tom Herman of Houston are seen (reasonably) as two of the “it” coaches in college football. Given that 10 vacancies have opened up (with more likely on the way — cough, Virginia, cough), and given that some very attractive vacancies are part of that landscape (USC, South Carolina, Virginia Tech, Miami), it can legitimately be said that Fuente and Herman are auditioning for various athletic directors in this game.

NFL scouts might be on hand to evaluate Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch, but the foremost “scouts” watching Tigers-Cougars are the men who lead FBS athletic programs. They want their next great coach, and this game offers two possible candidates.

Memphis-Houston is a battle for the AAC West title (alongside Navy). It is a clash loaded with New Year’s Six implications. It is a delicious duel between Lynch and Houston quarterback Greg Ward, Jr. It is all of those things… and yet the coaching matchup is the top story.

Here’s why:

Memphis and Houston are not top-tier coaching jobs in the FBS. Memphis is a basketball school. Houston became a powerful football school in the late 1970s under Bill Yeoman, but it has not retained that status, in large part because the Southwest Conference went out of business. UH is a great stepping-stone job — just ask Art Briles and Kevin Sumlin — but it is not currently a final landing spot for coaches.

Yet, what happens when a game of such consequence occurs at these kinds of programs? Fuente and Herman are almost certainly eyeing bigger jobs (at least in their private moments). However, what will happen during and after this game? Will something tug at their internal compass and lead them to stay at these jobs for a long time? Will one or both of them feel called to make this the job of their careers, the place where they hope to create a powerhouse which can break down the walls of the College Football Playoff and make history on behalf of the Group of Five conferences?

Chris Petersen turned Boise State from a “really good program” to a national player. He went 14-0 in 2009, a season which — had a playoff existed — might have meant a spot in the semifinals. He came agonizingly close to making the national championship game in the 2010 season. (Damn kickers.) Boise State broke barriers in college football. Petersen was that rare bird who stayed in a place such as Boise instead of immediately jumping for something bigger. Petersen took his sweet time, finally scratching the itch to test himself at the Power 5 level. However, he gave Boise his best for a long time. The program and its reputation permanently changed as a result.

Will Justin Fuente or Tom Herman — or both? — become transformed by this game… if indeed they are currently of a mind to go to Los Angeles for the Men of Troy… or to the land of the Gamecocks, or to The U in seductive South Florida?

The storylines for this game are — in a word — sprawling. It’s hard to contain all the subplots and subtexts spilling out of Memphis-Houston. It’s a Texas-sized tussle in an American city — and an American Athletic Conference — marked by growth.

This is American sprawl, college football-style. It’s pretty neat.

Hopefully, the game and the coaching will live up to the billing.

About Matt Zemek

Editor, @TrojansWire | CFB writer since 2001 |

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