It’s not just FedEx. Memphis basketball is Memphis. FedEx may be the biggest single NIL but there are dozens of other local businesses getting into it big too.
Same reason FedEx pushed the PGA to lift the St Jude golf tournament to WGC, then just announced this year for bext year, playoff, status. Memphis is its home. The golf tournament is 500 feet from its headquarters. The Tigers play at the FedExForum and one of its divisions (FedExLogistics) is based across the street from it.
FedEx wants its name mentioned at interesting and widely watched events. That gives it an incentive to help bring the best talent possible to the venue. Talent on the court will raise interest. The presumed improved performance will raise interest. Interest also raises attendance. Bates and Duran are good for FedExForum. Whats good for the Forum is generally good for the company.
I just don't see why FedEx would throw that much money into advertising. They're a company that seems like they'll get plenty of business and growth and doesn't really need to throw a few million dollar at college freshmen so people know what FedEx Forum is
People from Memphis, live bleed and die Memphis. If anything goes on in Memphis, it is going to have a FedEx logo on it because they sponsor everything that goes on in that city. The reason is, is Fred Smith, was born in Mississippi, but he grew up in Memphis and went the traditional East Memphis route, Presbyterian Day School and the high school at MUS.
FedEx does not give a shit about ROI when it comes to spending Ad money in Memphis, this is all about a company, its founders, and I am sure a lot of the execs, being from Memphis and how Memphis people love Memphis.
A lot of the people who work for these corporations in Memphis are huge boosters and super fans of the basketball team. It’s not just for advertising, it’s the desperation of seeing a consistent winner again.
Eh within the city they usually are. There’s no one college team above the Titans in Nashville. I’d be very very shocked if people thought UGA or Georgia Tech were above the Falcons or Braves in Atlanta as well. If you’re talking state-wide though that’s probably true.
Atlanta's a transient city though with a ton of transplants.
I mean there's a whole slew of UGA grads there, as well as the GT grads that stay there. I know many who say they prefer their college teams to the Falcons or the Cobb County Braves
Peak U of M basketball devours the Grizzlies… and we absolutely adore the Grizzlies. Memphis basketball is just different. We connect with young hungry ball players on a different level than already made multi millionaires. It’s a blue collar city
I think most of us just want to dominate at all levels of basketball. Look how big it gets when a high school team starts rolling. If the Grizzlies ended up winning the Finals at home, it would probably be peak pandemonium. Everyone would take the next day or two as a holiday. Liquor stores would empty out. Who knows, maybe me and some pals get in chargers and race down 240?
Memphis basketball has been around and been prominent for a long time with only a recent drop off. Grizzlies have only been around since the end of the 90s/early 2000s (can't remember exact year). Memphis Tigers basketball will halt the entire city. It's something else.
2001 And it helps that the NBA playoffs don’t match with a Tigers NCAA run 1:1 on the calendar so you can consume both although I can’t think of a year both teams were good at the same time.
They are. Especially with younger people. There are a lot of Ole Miss, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, etc fans in Memphis that don’t necessarily root for the Tigers.
No idea how big they are but it's hard to quantify how ravenously insane people are for the Tigers in Memphis. Fred Smith is the only reason why the football team has become relevant again. They were even wanting to big boost the school to offer Calipari 10 mil plus to stay in Memphis. There is a metric shit ton of net worth within the highland hundred booster club.
Ashley Furniture dude has to be crazy about the Tigers too. Always giving away 100's of tickets. They are definitely going to throw money at recruits. Bank of Bartlett as well.
You are aware that even though a company is publicly it’s founders and execs usually retain enough shares to maintain control right? Fred Smith is still CEO and still who many consider the controlling owner of FedEx. Do you know if the public shares even have voting rights? Even if they do, when a company is that widely held, the CEO is the one in complete control because you can never get the votes necessary to remove him. Don’t come spewing about how it’s publicly traded without an understanding of corporate structures and power.
Also a quick google search disproves your population thing.
And population doesn’t matter, money and how much the city cares about the team does, we’ve already gone though how much old money is in Memphis. And Memphis Tiger basketball is the top sport in town. Further Memphis is a basketball city, in a region dominated by football, Memphis cares much more about basketball than anything else. And FedEx doesn’t have to directly sponsor NIL, the point is FedEx pumps waaaaaay too much money back into Memphis to get a ROI, and many corps in Memphis do that, which means the city has plenty of money to throw at the people’s first love. Because FedEx isn’t the only big Corp there, International Paper is another example.
I’m really loving all these people who have never been to Memphis telling the people who have how the city works.
And I’m not here to ra ra Memphis, I’m not from there. But I know the city well because of how many friends I have from there and have visited frequently.
I just understand how the city works and explaining to people dumbfounded by the NIL potential for Tiger basketball. Tiger football won’t get these recruits because the city doesn’t care about it like they do basketball.
Hell, thee 5-stars are going to be more popular and have more ads than Ja will in Memphis, because not even the Grizzles are above Tiger basketball.
Public CEOs are controlled not by the voting rights of shareholders (good lord) but rather by their board. Not going to read the rest but hope you're okay.
Late to this, but Memphis has a lot more than just FedEx. There's a lot of big companies and businesses in Memphis, and they are deeply tied to the city, which is deeply tied to the University.
Having said that, FedEx, and Fred Smith specifically, love sports. They basically pushed the PGA from having Memphis as a regular tour spot to a WGC event to a FedEx Cup playoff spot, and likely going to be the FedEx Cup final tournament as well.
This is the part I don’t understand because MSU can play ball with that.
Fred Smith is worth $5.8B.
MSU has Dan Gilbert (owner of the Cavs worth $38B), Tom Gores (owner of the Pistons worth $5.9B), and Mat Ishbia (his company has the Piston’s jersey sponsorship & is worth $8.3B). Mat Ishbia even played for Izzo & just donated $32M to MSU athletics earlier this year.
This doesn’t even count Magic Johnson, who was formerly part-owner of the Lakers & reportedly the second-wealthiest basketball player ever at $600M.
MSU alumni are strangely over-represented amongst rich people who love basketball.
Mat Ishbia donated $32M to the athletic department in February to build a football facility, name the basketball court after Izzo, & earmarked $2M for Izzo to do whatever he wanted with.
Gilbert gave $15M in 2016 to pay for an addition to the basketball arena, which has Gilbert’s name on it now.
Draymond Green gave $3.1M in 2015, the largest donation ever by an active professional athlete to their alma mater. The basketball fitness facility is named after him now.
Why $3.1M? Because Magic Johnson previously donated $3M in 2012 and he wanted to beat it.
Then there’s Steve Smith, who donated $2.5M in 1997 and has the student athlete academic center named after his mom.
There are 4 buildings on campus named after these guys within a block of each other.
I guess it’s possible someone else cares more, but I doubt there are many.
There’s a huge difference in donating to a university to get your name on a building and paying players direct with possibly no end benefit to the donator. A lot of the other commenters here don’t seem to realize how many rich folks in the latter group Memphis has. You’re exactly right. Those other places could’ve ponied up but they didn’t have the same desire as Memphis.
I mean I get that fam, but if they wanted this to happen, it would’ve. Any recruiting guy worth his weight in salt has been saying Memphis for at least a month, and it was solely cuz bates was for sale to the highest bidder.
Your delusional if you don't think every top Football and Basketball team doesn't have bagmen and no coach knows about it because that would be just dumb self incrimination.
Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by others in an organizational hierarchy because of a lack or absence of evidence that can confirm their participation, even if they were personally involved in or at least willfully ignorant of the actions. If illegal or otherwise-disreputable and unpopular activities become public, high-ranking officials may deny any awareness of such acts to insulate themselves and shift the blame onto the agents who carried out the acts, as they are confident that their doubters will be unable to prove otherwise. The lack of evidence to the contrary ostensibly makes the denial plausible (credible), but sometimes, it makes any accusations only unactionable.
It wasnt the universitys money, so its all good. And it worked for Penny because Wiseman is another NBA guy Penny is linked to helping with their career (including guys who didnt attend Memphis or play for him -- Grimes, Cam Payne, RJ Hampton).
Totally fair. Memphis definitely does have pull with top recruits lately, but you're right they haven't achieved what you would think given who they're bringing in (although Wiseman shut it down super early in the season so they recruited three, only really had two play for them).
Cisse (last year), Wiseman & Achiuwa (two years ago) ... during the Tubby and late-Pastner years it was rarer. Maybe Will Barton? It's not really a shock.
Yeah. I don't think people are as up on Memphis bball and that's understandable since they're not in a P5. So the question of "why is this G5 school getting 5-stars" is warranted. Memphis does have some pedigree though and it's got a good pipeline of local talent (that chooses to stick around whether it's at Memphis or UT).
Why the lack of recent success? Three reasons ... that no one wants to hear. Last year, injuries (I know, cry me a river, everyone has injuries, right?). Two years ago, the Wiseman/ncaa debacle/clusterfcuk season. And lastly, it IS only Hardaway's 3rd season afterall.
Whoa, whoa, whoa!!!!! Top 10? Slow down!!! Another thing about Memphis ... we curb our enthusiasm. We sorta wait for some bad shit to happen (damn mario chalmers, why didn't cal intentionally foul him?, bad coaching).
But yeah, we don't get our expectations out-of-whack. We tend to be very realistic. Let's just see how things play out.
This will be Penny’s 4th season. Before this, there was the Harris, Lomax freshmen, give the ball to Martin and let him score season. The Wismean clusterfuck, thank god for Precious, fuck Jeffries is out season. And the can’t score, can’t close with Cisse, thank God for Williams, man this defense is legit season.
Pastner was a great recruiter who couldn’t lead the guys who he brought in. When it became clear that every last 5 star that he got ended up not panning out, the recruiting dried up, the bottom fell out, we went from first weekend tournament type team to barely .500, and he got run out of town.
Over the past couple of years, Wiseman essentially never played, Achiuwa was fantastic, but between Wiseman leaving, and the 2nd best scorer getting a season ending injury, there just wasn’t enough juice on the team to get to the tourney. Cisse was a complete disaster that the recruiting analysts just missed on. He was literally unplayable at the end of the game because his FT shooting was under 33%. The guys coming this year are basically being added to a team that was good enough to win a game or two in the tourney, but gelled too late in the season to put together the resume to get in. So this year ought to be different.
It is very funny that there are so many simultaneous highly upvoted comments arguing both that there's no way Memphis can make such good NIL offers and that Bates is only doing this for the money (which is probably closer to the truth)
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u/TheBlueRajasSpork Memphis Tigers 19d ago
The rumor is 7 figure NIL deals