I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to emerge from the shadows and blow me away with an executive plan for the program.
Tom Bowen
This isn’t a cry to be woke. This is an alum beseeching his University to reflect the people it serves.
Nostalgia won’t win games, though. Last year’s team finished 11-13 (7-8) However, you could see that there was something different about the 2020-21 version of the Red Wolves. They played with cohesion. They began to reduce mistakes. Those painfully long scoring droughts melted away.
Much like the hire of Butch Jones earlier this year, the Bowen hire smacks of bottomline mentality. Under Bowen, Memphis radically transformed its football infrastructure while maintaining acceptable (if not championship caliber) results in basketball. It was Bowen who ushered Memphis from CUSA to the Big East (lol) to the AAC. It was Bowen who hired Mike Norvell…and Tubby Smith, which was quite the drama.