According to The Commercial Appeal, TCU assistant Justin Fuente will be named the Memphis Tigers new football coach on Thursday.
Fuente has been on Gary Patterson’s staff at TCU since 2007 when he was hired as the Horned Frogs’ running backs coach. He was promoted to co-offensive coordinator in 2009 where he established a reputation as an innovative play caller.
Prior to joining TCU’s staff, he spent six seasons as an assistant coach at Illinois State.
Fuente is a 1999 graduate of Murray State University. He began his college football career at Oklahoma where he started at quarterback for the Sooners in his freshman and sophomore seasons. He transferred to Murray State to reunite with head coach Denver Johnson, a former Oklahoma assistant.
During his playing career at Murray State, Fuente set 11 school records and was named Ohio Valley Conference offensive player and also was a finalist for the Walter Payton award.
The announcement of Fuente as the Tigers’ coach comes as a surprise after it appeared that Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain had agreed to take the job.
It’s unclear at this point why Memphis pulled their offer to McElwain. According to The Commercial Appeal’s sources, McElwain was the leading candidate for the Tigers’ job from a field that included Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks coach Randy Fichtner and former Arizona coach Mike Stoops.
Reaction to the announcement among Tigers’ fans has mostly been negative. Most of Memphis’ limited football fan base were hoping the school would hire someone that could help turn around one of college football’s worst programs.
Many voiced their displeasure with the decision to hire Fuente, believing an unproven coach from a mid major football program won’t be able to take on the huge task of making Memphis Tigers football relevant again.
To read more of this article and view Fuente’s bio, visit the Commercial Appeal.
