The Games Matter

50 Years of Sports in Memphis.

by

Features

Editor’s Note: As part of our 50th anniversary, we asked writers to reflect on a half-century of Memphis history, but through a specific cultural lens. What follows is managing editor Frank Murtaugh’s thoughts on the world of Memphis sports. You can find the entire package in our April 2026 print edition. Not a subscriber? Start one, and we'll send you a copy of the special issue.

When City of Memphis magazine first hit mailboxes in April 1976, this town’s sports scene might best have been described as “transitional.” Memphis was a basketball town, no doubt, but this was three years after Larry Finch played his last game as a Memphis State Tiger, and five years before a gangly kid from West Memphis by the name of Keith Lee arrived in blue and gray. This was the year the American Basketball Association disbanded, and a year after our Memphis Sounds played their final game at the Mid-South Coliseum. The four ABA teams that joined the NBA gave the more-established league 22 franchises. The notion of an NBA team in Memphis? Yeah, right. We’re more likely to see a pyramid on the banks of the Mississippi.

But we do have a Pyramid on the banks of the Mighty Miss! We also have an NBA team — the Memphis Grizzlies — that has established the Bluff City as unequivocally big-league for a quarter-century now. Between 1976 and 2026? Well, arguably the greatest pure athlete of the 20th century called Memphis home for much of the summer in 1986. A football player recently ranked as the fifth-best in the sport’s history — fifth-best — played two seasons in the Liberty Bowl. And how about this: The one and only player to win a professional baseball championship in Memphis with a home run went on to become only the fourth player to hit 700 homers in the major leagues. Reasons to cheer? Memphis has had countless over the last 50 years.

There are local sporting events that are actually older than Memphis Magazine. The PGA tournament today known as the FedEx St. Jude Championship was first played in 1958 as the Memphis Open. Among the champions crowned here: Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Gary Player, and Greg Norman. In 1977, Al Geiberger shot the first 59 in PGA history in the second round of the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club.

Bud Dudley brought the Liberty Bowl to Memphis in 1965, making it the seventh-oldest bowl game in college football. You’ve heard of Bear Bryant? The Alabama icon coached his final game in Memphis, a Tide victory in the 1982 Liberty Bowl. Two years later, Auburn running back Bo Jackson earned MVP honors in helping his Tigers beat Arkansas. Two years after that, Jackson made the cover of Sports Illustrated in a Memphis Chicks(!) uniform, the Heisman Trophy winner having chosen a professional baseball career — at the time — over football.

Baseball has been good to Memphis, and that goes for players who didn’t spend their offseasons in NFL stadiums. As the Double-A affiliate of the Montreal Expos, the Memphis Chicks launched the likes of Charlie Lea, Tim Wallach, and future Hall of Famer Tim Raines toward big-league stardom. The Chicks won a Southern League title in 1990, but the game changed in 1998 with the arrival of the Memphis Redbirds. Not only were the Redbirds the Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals — a regional favorite for generations — but the franchise delivered construction of AutoZone Park at Union Avenue and Third Street, the largest sports investment in the city’s history at that time and a minor-league stadium built with big-league ambition under the watch of Dean and Kristi Jernigan.

And the inaugural season (2000) at AutoZone Park was grand. The Redbirds reached the Pacific Coast League championship series and on September 15th, provided one of the greatest single moments in Memphis sports history. Tied with Salt Lake in the 13th inning, the Redbirds sent a 20-year-old outfielder by the name of Albert Pujols to the plate. Promoted from Class-A just a few weeks earlier, Pujols slammed a home run just inside the rightfield foul pole to clinch the PCL title in walk-off fashion. Fast forward 22 years later, and Pujols retired as a three-time MVP and two-time world champion with St. Louis, having hit 703 home runs and accumulated 6,211 total bases (second only to Hank Aaron).

David Freese and Allen Craig starred for another Redbirds championship team in 2009 before helping the Cardinals win the 2011 World Series. Then in 2017, Stubby Clapp — a backflipping second-baseman for the 2000 champs and the only player in Redbirds history to have his number (10) retired — returned to Memphis to manage the club. Clapp led the Redbirds to 91 wins (the most by a Memphis team since 1948) and the first of two consecutive PCL titles on his way to Minor League Manager of the Year honors from Baseball America.

Baseball isn’t the only “minor league” to impact the Mid-South. The Memphis Rogues of the North American Soccer League played three seasons in the Liberty Bowl, then two more as an indoor team in the Mid-South Coliseum. (This franchise somehow called an elephant its mascot and made the cover of our April 1978 issue. The baby elephant was pink.) The Memphis Americans picked up where the Rogues left off and played four seasons in the Major Indoor Soccer League, also earning one of our covers (November 1983). The Showboats of the United States Football League stole Memphis hearts for two spring seasons (1984-85) and suited up sackmaster Reggie White, considered by many the greatest defensive lineman in football history. Concerted efforts to attract the NFL — first the relocation of the Baltimore Colts in 1983, then for an expansion team in 1992 — fell short, though Memphis was home to the NFL for one forgettable season (1997), when the “Tennessee Oilers” played home games in the Liberty Bowl before settling a year later in Nashville as the Tennessee Titans.

The University of Memphis has been the city’s flagship team on the gridiron for more than a century now. There weren’t many memorable seasons in the latter part of the 20th century, though coach Rex Dockery oversaw a 6-4-1 turnaround in 1983 after a pair of 1-10 campaigns. Dockery was tragically killed in a plane crash on a recruiting trip on December 12, 1983.

The arrival of quarterback Danny Wimprine in 2001 and running back DeAngelo Williams a year later changed Tiger football. They led Memphis to its first bowl game in three decades after the 2003 season (a victory in the New Orleans Bowl) and Williams rushed for more than 1,900 yards in both his junior and senior seasons, becoming only the fourth player in FBS history to rush for 6,000 yards in his career. The program seemed to bottom out with only three wins over two years (2010-11), but the arrival of coach Justin Fuente in 2012 fueled a renaissance that has yielded, to date, twelve consecutive seasons of bowl eligibility. One record-setting quarterback after another has suited up in blue and gray under Fuente, his successor Mike Norvell, and then Ryan Silverfield: Paxton Lynch, Riley Ferguson, Brady White, and Seth Henigan. Receiver Anthony Miller (2017) and running back Darrell Henderson (2018) each earned first-team All-America honors.

In October 2019, ESPN’s GameDay crew came to Memphis and showed the college football universe what Beale Street could become with bigtime football in the air. The Tigers beat SMU in front of a packed Liberty Bowl and, two months later, played Penn State in the Cotton Bowl. The Tigers lost to the Nittany Lions but it remains the greatest stage a once-derided program has ever seen.

Memphis was a basketball town in 1976, and it’s a basketball town today. When this magazine celebrates its centennial in 2076, basketball will dominate the podcasts and “socials” (however these are defined 50 years from now). Keith Lee scored more than 2,000 points and led the Memphis State Tigers to the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 four consecutive years (1982-85) and the 1985 Final Four, and it’s not even the best era of the last half-century. Under coach John Calipari, the Tigers put up a four-year record of 137-14 from the 2005-06 season through 2008-09. (Look at that record again.) Fueled by All-American Chris Douglas-Roberts and future NBA MVP Derrick Rose, the Tigers reached the 2008 championship game, only to fall to Kansas, dammit, in overtime.

Seventeen years after Calipari’s departure for Kentucky, the Tigers have not returned to the Sweet 16, even with local legend Penny Hardaway coaching the program since 2018. (The greatest Tiger of them all, Larry Finch, coached the Tigers for 11 years — 1986 to 1997 — and won more than 200 games but didn’t reach the Final Four.) On the subject of Hardaway, if we were to name an Athlete of the Half-Century, it would be the 1990 graduate of Treadwell High School. The national player of the year as a high school senior, Hardaway went on to earn All-America honors at Memphis State (1993), then was twice named first-team All-NBA with the Orlando Magic. Hardaway is the only member of the gold medal-winning 1996 U.S. Olympic team not in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

What kind of impact did the Memphis Grizzlies make after first tipping off against the Detroit Pistons in that Pyramid(!) on November 1, 2001? How about featuring the NBA’s Rookie of the Year (Pau Gasol) their inaugural season? How about landing Hall of Famer Jerry West in their front office for year two and Hubie Brown raising the league’s Coach of the Year trophy in 2004?

When FedExForum opened for the 2004-05 season, the Mid-South finally had a true basketball palace and by the end of the decade, a “core four” that would lead the Grizzlies to seven consecutive playoff appearances and the 2013 Western Conference finals. Today, Zach Randolph, Marc Gasol (the 2015 Defensive Player of the Year and the Grizzlies’ only first-team All-NBA selection), and Tony Allen have their retired numbers displayed on banners in the FedExForum rafters. When Mike Conley’s playing days finally end, we’ll see a fourth banner raised. The electrifying Ja Morant arrived in 2019, earned the 2020 Rookie of the Year award, and helped Memphis to its first two Southwest Division titles. But offcourt troubles for Morant and the recent trades of Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. suggest the “Ja Era” of Grizzlies glory may be all too brief. When might Memphis reach its first NBA Finals? Merely asking the question is a statement on Bluff City sports today as compared with 1976.

Fifty years in, we find ourselves missing a few friends. The Racquet Club of Memphis hosted a professional tennis tournament for 40 years. Bjorn Borg won a title here. So did Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi, and Pete Sampras. The Memphis RiverKings made hockey a fun night out for more than two decades (1992-2018), winning a pair of Central Hockey League championships. And how about 901 FC making AutoZone Park a cozy home for professional soccer (2019-24)?

It’s been five decades of cheering, jeering, and, now and then, tearing up when a moment is recognized for the memory it will become. Consider the Southern Heritage Classic, the brainchild of Fred Jones and for almost 40 years now, an annual weeklong party centered on a football game between HBCU programs. Does the winner of the game matter? The final score? On the surface, sure. For the record books. But the togetherness we see — the togetherness we feel — every September around the SHC? That’s Memphis sports. Here’s to the next five decades.