Mike Singletary
Photograph courtesy Memphis Express / Alliance of American Football
If the Alliance of American Football succeeds anywhere, it may well be in Memphis, Tennessee. The upstart professional league — eight teams, owned by the league itself — begins play this month, with your Memphis Express traveling to Birmingham to play the Iron on February 10th, precisely a week after Super Bowl LIII. When the Arizona Hotshots come to town for the home opener on February 16th, the Liberty Bowl may or may not be buzzing with anticipation. (Much will likely depend on the temperature, with kickoff scheduled for 7 p.m.) However the team is received, though, over the course of a 10-game regular season, the Memphis Express will aim to plant deeper roots than other gridiron offshoots that called the Bluff City home.
A quick stroll by the tombstones of Memphis pro football would remind a fan of the Southmen (casually called the Grizzlies) of the World Football League, a team that lured future Hall of Famer Larry Csonka (of Miami Dolphin fame) from the NFL before folding in 1975, midway through its second season.
The USFL’s Memphis Showboats suited up their own future Hall of Famer in sackmeister Reggie White. The ’Boats once packed 50,000 fans into the Liberty Bowl for a game in June and averaged more than 31,000 fans for their 1985 season. But after falling a game short of playing for the USFL championship, the Showboats disbanded with the rest of the upstart league, victims of a misguided lawsuit filed against the NFL by one Donald J. Trump.
Since the Showboats, we’ve cheered the Memphis Mad Dogs (also coached by Pepper Rodgers) for one season (1995) in the Canadian Football League. The Memphis Pharaohs brought actual camels to the Pyramid during their two seasons (1995-96) in the Arena Football League. And lest we forget the Memphis Maniax of the XFL (2001), founder Vince McMahon (of pro wrestling fame) aims to relaunch the operation in 2020.
All these teams have little to do with the Express, of course, until we remember past is prologue, particularly when it comes to minor-league sports. And especially in a venture selling football during a time of year when much of the sports-watching American public is focused on basketball (if not joining the rest of the world on weekend mornings and watching soccer). You get the impression the Express had better win, and win early. Nothing shades novelty like a lengthy losing streak.
And the Express may well win. The team will be coached by Hall of Famer Mike Singletary, to many the face of the most fearsome defense in pro football history (the 1985 Chicago Bears). Singletary found challenges as an NFL coach — he was 18-22 over parts of three seasons with the San Francisco 49ers — that he didn’t often face over his 12-year playing career. The AAF has a pair of coaches who have won national titles in college (Steve Spurrier with the Orlando Apollos and Dennis Erickson with the Salt Lake Stallions), but it’s unlikely any coach in this football experiment is more motivated to boost his resume than the man once known as “Samurai Mike.”
As for the players, the Express roster is built less on star power than regional ties. You’ll find various positions manned by players from Tennessee, LSU, Tennessee State, Arkansas, Ole Miss, and yes, Memphis. (The team’s president, Kosha Irby, was a Tiger defensive back in the 1990s.) Every last one of these players would prefer suiting up in the fall for an NFL franchise. Which may make this team more distinctly Memphis than any outfit that came before. Bluff City hearts were broken in 1992 when Charlotte and Jacksonville (Jacksonville!) were given NFL expansion franchises, those vibrant Showboat nights long forgotten. When the “Tennessee Oilers” squatted for a single season (1997) at the Liberty Bowl, they were largely ignored for the cruel tease they were.
Whatever we might say about the Express come April (when four teams will battle in the first AAF playoffs), this is our team, a Memphis outfit with a name long revered in these parts. Here’s hoping the underdog — and by that, I mean the entire eight-team league — finds a way to stir football culture. After all, that’s what we do in Memphis.
The Express will host games on Feb. 16 (Arizona), March 2nd (San Diego), March 24th (Birmingham), March 30th (Orlando), and April 13th (Atlanta).
