Memphis Could Be College Football’s Biggest Secret Right Now

It’s not often that a team poised to win its 11th straight game is a borderline secret, but that’s the image problem Memphis of the AAC would like to shed very soon. The Tigers are 3-0 and, if they win on Thursday night against visiting Cincinnati in the league’s game of the week, they will have won 11 straight.

The problem is they only have one vote and are at the bottom of this week’s “others receiving votes” in the AP poll. That would qualify them as college football’s biggest secret of the year. In a few hours, though, the secret could be out for a national audience to see. The way it is set up now, one of the Group of Five is going to get into a BCS bowl game and the real jockeying begins on Thursday night. The Tigers, who shared the AAC title a year ago, want the whole pie and, if they get it, they will move to the top of the G5 early rankings.

To do that, the Tigers will have to first beat the Bearcats, a team that entered the season as the preseason AAC East favorite. An added bonus is that the game is on ESPN (7:30 p.m.) So, if the Tigers win, the nation will know they have positioned themselves well to win the AAC West. Only two AAC teams have more votes than the Tigers in the AP top 25 poll, and one of those teams, Temple, is idle this weekend. The other, Houston, hosts a weak foe in Texas State.

Memphis is a solid favorite for a number of reasons, the first being that it took care of business in a 41-14 win at Cincinnati last year with many of the same players on this year’s team. The second is that Gunner Kiel, the quarterback of the Bearcats (2-1), is day-to-day after suffering a head injury in a 37-33 win over Miami (Ohio) last week. On the other hand, Paxton Lynch, the Tigers’ star quarterback, is healthy.

The Tigers are also on the verge of some interesting history in that a win would put them at 4-0 for the first time in 54 years. They are a feel-good program in a sport that lacks real feel-good stories.

Their coach, Justin Fuente, arrived four years ago and was 7-17 in his first two years before finishing No. 25 in the AP poll a year ago. He beat Bowling Green with a gutsy double-reverse flea-flicker call a week ago. The fact that he is still at Memphis instead of being swallowed up by a P5 school speaks to his character and commitment to a program that is just starting to be noticed.

Mike Gibson is a featured writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.