Fifteen years ago on Saturday, Tommy West walked into a press conference planning to thank the Memphis football fans for his nine years as coach of the Tigers.
But emotions were high. He’d just been fired, and though he was allowed to finish the season, his frustrations had been building for years.
“It was bad, and I’d been saying it for two years,” West told The Commercial Appeal on Friday. “And then that day, it just kind of leaked out.”
It leaked out with a fiery rant that’s become an infamous moment in the program’s history. His plea that day was pretty straightforward — invest in the program or shut it down.
“It’s too painful. It’s painful for coaches, for players and for people, for fans,” West said that day. “Put something in it or do away with it, one or the other, that’s what they should do.”
The ensuing 15 years have made West feel vindicated. Memphis has invested in its football program in plenty of ways since then — multiple new facilities, an in-progress stadium renovation and now a FedEx NIL deal that outpaces everyone else in the AAC. The Tigers entered this season as the favorites to win the AAC and got plenty of College Football Playoff buzz, but they sit at 8-2 (4-2 AAC) after Friday’s win over Rice.
A section of the fan base will point out that Memphis once went 32 years without going to a bowl game before West’s 2003 team. It’s hard to reconcile that program with the one that exists now — the one where an 8-2 record is considered a disappointment.
“We took something over that, well, it wasn’t very good,” West said. “And it wasn’t very pretty, it wasn’t very good-looking, either. From leaks in the weight room, to leaks in the locker room, it was just bad. It was a bad program.”
In retrospect, West knows he got fired in part because he’d raised the expectations and hadn’t met the new ones. He also thought Memphis had maxed out its potential with those facilities, but the investment and success by Justin Fuente, Mike Norvell and Ryan Silverfield shows that the pathway was there.
West, 70, had a couple stops as a defensive coordinator after leaving Memphis before spending 10 seasons as defensive line coach at Middle Tennessee State. He left the Blue Raiders after longtime coach Rick Stockstill was fired last year.
Larry Porter took over after West and went 3-21 in two seasons. But Fuente arrived after that and quickly turned things around, leading the Tigers to an AAC title in 2014. He left in 2015 for Virginia Tech, but Norvell arrived and continued to raise the bar for the program.
“I’d been there when they rebuilt, but I’d never really been there when there was a successful tenure and then a new coach came in,” said Darrell Dickey, who had been an assistant with Memphis in the 1980s and returned to serve as offensive coordinator under both Fuente and Norvell. “Sometimes sustaining what’s doing is almost as difficult as picking it up off the floor. And Mike, I think, just really continued to build.”
A few years earlier, West had only wanted Memphis to be on a level playing field with the rest of Conference USA. He chuckles trying to compare the program he took over with where Memphis sits relative to its conference now.
But he also knows that heightened expectatations mean more pressure on a coach — in this case, Silverfield.
“If you’re up at the top, and you’re not winning, then you’ve got to get a new coach,” West said. “You’ve got to get somebody else in there. But if you’re at the top, in what they’re in right now, then no reason you can’t and shouldn’t be.”
Silverfield has acknowledged that, too. After last week’s loss to UTSA, he said he loved that Memphis now expects to compete for conference championships every year.
“It’s a wonderful thing when we have the opportunity to talk about 7-2 isn’t good enough,” he said. “That’s a great thing.”
The 10-year anniversary of West’s press conference came in 2019, right after Memphis hosted “College GameDay” for the first time and right before the Tigers won the AAC title and went to the Cotton Bowl. But then Norvell left for Florida State, and the Tigers haven’t been back to the AAC title game in the last five years.
Memphis is unlikely to get there this year, which means the season likely won’t be looked back on fondly by a lot of fans even if the Tigers get to 10 or 11 wins. That would’ve been an insane thing to tell West when he arrived in Memphis more than 20 years ago.
“I feel like we got the ball rolling,” West said. “I take great pride in that.”
Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on X @thejonahdylan.
