With blue and gray coursing through his veins, Harold Byrd readies himself for another Tiger season in Memphis. Photograph by Larry Kuzniewski.
No football team would ever call itself the Swans. “Fighting Swans” would be both awkward and an oxymoron. But for decades, the University of Memphis football program has been an ugly duckling in a large pond of prettier SEC waterfowl. Drive along Poplar Avenue on a fall Saturday and you’ll see as many flags of red (Arkansas or Ole Miss), maroon (Mississippi State), purple (LSU), or orange (Tennessee) as you will the blue and gray of this city’s lone representative in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
But there is a contingent of devoted fans who have only shown blue and gray, year after year, regardless of the Memphis Tigers’ record (often poor) or the heights climbed by SEC programs (11 national championships over the last 20 years). The face — usually smiling — of that Tiger-true contingent is Harold Byrd.
“Any success my brothers, sisters, and I have enjoyed, we owe to our educations at the University of Memphis,” says the longtime president of Bank of Bartlett (founded by Byrd and his brothers in 1980). As the Highland Hundred marks its 60th season in support of Tiger Football, Byrd personifies a fan base somehow emboldened by its ugly-duckling status. He emphasizes the booster club had more than 200 members when he joined in the early Seventies and has retained an energy not found in many programs outside the mighty “Power Five” conferences. “Even in lean years,” notes Byrd, “the Highland Hundred has been a vibrant group of people who gather for the Tigers.”
Byrd grew up the youngest of seven siblings in rural McNairy County, his childhood devoted to school, church, and his family’s farm (cotton and soybeans). The Tigers of what was then known as Memphis State University first captured Byrd’s attention when the basketball team reached the 1957 NIT championship game (they lost to Bradley). A member of that team — James Hockaday — had played with Byrd’s brother, John, at Selmer High School. Byrd’s earliest memory of Tiger football is the scoreless tie with second-ranked Ole Miss on September 21, 1963. He didn’t see the game or listen to it on the radio, but Harold Byrd found himself attached to a local underdog.
He realized a measure of salvation in 1961 (he was in 6th grade) when his family moved to Memphis and enjoyed, for the first time, indoor plumbing, a telephone, and air conditioning. Byrd played football (quarterback) and basketball (guard) at Bartlett High School, but only for two years, graduating at age 16 in 1967. He enrolled at Memphis State without so much as considering another institution. And that fall — in his very first game at the Liberty Bowl — Harold Byrd assumed his Tiger stripes. For life.
“The first football game I saw in person,” reflects Byrd, “was Memphis State and Ole Miss at the Liberty Bowl [on September 23, 1967]. We beat them, 27-17. People were sitting in the aisles. I believe the Liberty Bowl then had a capacity of 50,149 people. There were probably 60,149 people in the stands. Nothing could have been more exciting for a 16-year-old guy. The Liberty Bowl was newly built, beautiful. Planes flying overhead. I later became friends with quarterback Ricky Thurow.”
Byrd likes sharing the story of legendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant severing the Crimson’s Tide relationship with the Tigers after a pair of narrow victories (in 1958 and ’59). There were better ways to spend fall Saturdays, in Bryant’s view, than butting heads with a gritty nonconference foe to the north. Memphis State enjoyed winning seasons in all four of Byrd’s undergraduate years (going 8-2 in 1969), and five straight winning campaigns in the mid-Seventies under coaches Fred Pancoast and Richard Williamson.
After completing studies for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business, Byrd won a seat in the Tennessee legislature (he served from 1976 to 1982). During his first full year in Nashville, Byrd introduced a bill that would obligate the University of Tennessee to play Memphis State every year, in both football and basketball. The bill didn’t pass (Byrd notes that it did get out of committee), but it raised an important issue, particularly from Byrd’s perspective, on the importance of Tennessee — the state government — acknowledging and caring for its major university in the southwest corner.
The Tiger football program has had its fallow periods, some lengthy. During the 1980s, Memphis State suffered six seasons with no more than two wins, and that on top of the tragic plane crash that killed coach Rex Dockery, defensive back Charles Greenhill, and offensive coordinator Chris Faros on December 12, 1983. Byrd acknowledges a chip on the shoulder of many, if not most, longtime Tiger football fans, one due largely to the disparity between college football’s “haves” (Power Five programs, particularly those in the SEC) and “have-nots” (programs that must vie for relevance from second-tier conferences, like the Tigers’ American Athletic Conference).
“There are so many good universities,” says Byrd, “that are the heartbeat of a city and community, and they don’t get the same chances another university might just because they’re not in the Big Ten, the Big 12, or SEC. It makes you hunger for equity. When you look at what the University of Memphis has done in football, basketball, and other sports — on a budget that’s a twentieth of what UT, UCLA, or USC has — it’s an inequity that needs to be addressed and leveled.”
When it comes to sports, Byrd sees an advantage his alma mater enjoys that has little to do with budget or facilities. “This city seems to create basketball stars, and now football stars,” he says. “Local kids love playing for the Tigers. When you play for the University of Memphis, five or ten or twenty years after your career ends, you are somebody in Memphis, Tennessee. Go all the way back to James Earl Wright or Russell Vollmer in the Sixties. Bob Rush. Isaac Bruce is a legend in this town. He lives in Florida, but he comes back regularly.”
When asked about high points — his favorite memories as a Tiger football fan — Byrd chuckles, as so many games and players leap into his thoughts. He’s relentlessly positive and manages to smile even when reflecting on the “Ground Chuck” days under coach Chuck Stobart or the toothless offenses under Stobart’s successor, Rip Scherer. Record-shattering tailback DeAngelo Williams (2002-05) holds a special place in Byrd’s heart, as does All-American receiver Anthony Miller, drafted last April by the Chicago Bears. That first game he attended at the Liberty Bowl (in 1967) remains near the top of Byrd’s blue-and-gray memories. But there are other game days that gain life through tales and legend.
“In 1975, we went down to Auburn, and they were ranked 7th in the country,” reflects Byrd. “We were ahead at halftime, 24-0, with Terdell Middleton, and three unbelievable receivers: Ricky Rivas, Keith Wright, and Earnest Gray, who went on to the NFL. It was a helluva team. [Memphis State won the game, 31-20.] Shortly thereafter, we had a boycott under coach Richard Williamson and it seemed like things started to deteriorate.”
Byrd hosted a blowout party in the Mid-South Fairgrounds cattle barn prior to the 1996 opener against Miami. He actually found himself in hot water, having blown most of Bank of Bartlett’s marketing budget on the bash. (The Tigers got whipped, 30-7.) Two months later, new athletic director R.C. Johnson asked Byrd if he could host another party — back in the cattle barn — before kickoff against Tennessee. The feeling was that such a pregame celebration might help numb the pain of what was sure to be an ugly loss to the 6th-ranked Volunteers.
The Tigers beat Peyton Manning and friends that November night. Byrd’s party served as a warm-up — the weather was cool and damp that day — to the most memorable Tiger upset in at least a generation.
Looking back more than two decades now, Byrd’s role as booster, cheerleader, and faithful follower of an often-maligned program seems magnified, even brightened. “I never felt like we could not be what we are today,” says Byrd. The Tigers open their 2018 season — September 1st against Mercer at the Liberty Bowl — as the favorites to win a second-straight West Division title in the AAC. Memphis has finished in the nation’s Top 25 two of the last four seasons (2014 and 2017) and has set season scoring records three of the last four years. They have one of the hottest young coaches in the country, and Mike Norvell signed a five-year contract extension last December, adding a dose of stability to a program still aiming for the prestige of a New Year’s Six bowl appearance.
Coming off a 10-3 season in which they finished ranked 25th in the AP poll, Mike Norvell’s Memphis Tigers enter the 2018 campaign as favorites to win the American Athletic Conference’s West Division.
“I prefer to sit outside, to be part of the action,” notes Byrd when asked about the view of Tiger football from a booster’s suite. He and 17 others — family and friends — sit on a 40-yard line, right behind the Tiger bench, one fall weekend after another. Big wins, ugly losses, bright sunshine, or heavy rain, Byrd is there. This, of course, is the truest measure of fandom. Being there.
“It’s so darn fun now, with Coach [Justin] Fuente, and now Norvell,” says Byrd. His is a rather fundamental devotion and actually has less to do with winning football games than it does the attachment between person and place. “I love the University of Memphis,” says Byrd with a smile. “And I love this city.”
- September 1 — Mercer
- September 8 — at Navy
- September 14 (Friday) — Georgia State
- September 22 — South Alabama
- September 28 (Friday) — at Tulane
- October 6 — UConn
- October 13 — UCF
- October 20 — at Missouri
- November 3 — at East Carolina
- November 10 — Tulsa
- November 16 (Friday) — at SMU
- November 23 (Friday) — Houston
