To be honest, I had a pretty good idea of what the future was going to look like. I mean, did you really think the Memphis Tigers were going to compete for an AAC title this season? When this season kicked off in the midst of a global pandemic, did you really even care if the Tigers clawed their way to a Group of Five championship game? I understand that we play to win the games — shouts to Herm Edwards — but if there was ever a season in which we could perhaps waive or loosen that qualifier, wouldn’t this be the season?
After all, over the last twelve months, Memphis lost arguably their best head coach in program history, as well as a slew of starting skill position guys, including their best running back and wide receiver. I’m sure that even the most optimistic among us had to realize that there would likely be some growing pains, as the Tigers tried to figure out how to sustain last season’s historic success under new coach Ryan Silverfield.
Looking at it from the outside, the Tigers have a 5-3 record right now — well, 6-3 if you count a win over hapless Stephen F. Austin. Considering all the attrition and cancellations and various other stresses we are all dealing with, this isn’t so bad, is it? Especially with a shot to add one more win on top of everything with a win over Houston this week?
And yet, I have to admit that I have felt failed by the Tigers this season. They may be 6-3 against other teams, but against the odds, against the spread, the number that really matters for many of us, the Tigers have been historically, spectacularly awful.
I can tell you this, because I have bet on the Memphis Tigers again and again this season. And here’s what happened: They didn’t cover in a loss against SMU. They covered in a loss to UCF. They didn’t cover against Temple. They didn’t cover against Cincinnati. They didn’t cover against South Florida. They didn’t cover against Navy. They didn’t cover against Tulane. In a stat my “Odds Couple” cohost Rob Fischer passed along this morning, Memphis is 2-10 against the spread in their last 12 games.
Oof. I’m not sure what’s funnier, how the Tigers have somehow managed to continue losing against the spread week after week, or how I have continued betting on them to beat the spread, week after week after week. And me losing, week after week after week.
Clearly, somewhere along the way, my expectations became out of sync with reality. You see something happen once or twice, you should know better, right?
At the same time, I’m a believer in the law of averages. Things generally even out over the long term, or at least it seems that way. The very first time I went to Vegas, I basically employed this strategy when playing blackjack. When I lost, I bet more the next time and continued incrementally upping my bet each time. And at least on that night, I ended up way ahead of where I was when I had walked into that casino. Perhaps it was beginner’s luck, maybe it was just a night where the cards were in my favor. Whatever it was, it worked.
So believe me, I was as surprised as you might be when I wiki’d the Law Of Averages today, and it mentioned something called the Gambler’s Fallacy, which is “the erroneous belief that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa), when it has otherwise been established that the probability of such events does not depend on what has happened in the past.”
They may as well have just put my picture in there as the illustration. At the risk of sounding like Shaq talking about putting gas in his car, I still think this fallacy is a fallacy. If you flip a coin six times and it comes up heads all six times, wouldn’t you suspect it’s going to land on tails pretty soon? I know that there’s no real science behind this feeling — the coin doesn’t know what it’s come up the last six times — but still, I would be ready to put some money on tails at that point.
And that’s the way I feel about Memphis football this season. I’m glad Ryan Silverfield will finish with a winning record, and Brady White piled up a bunch of passing yards, and the Tigers persevered through a tough time and completed a season. Up until this week the Tigers were actually still in the mix to make it to the AAC Championship game, as wild as that sounds. (After losing to Tulane, the Tigers are no longer in the mix, as accurate as that sounds.) For all of that, they should be satisfied.
For all of us who just wanted to gamble a little on the Tigers? They’ve been brutal.
But I know that maybe, just maybe, this is the week they’re going to finally cover.