Here's a funny story (now some decades later on) about Memphis football. It was 1969, Lee Corso's first year as UL football coach, and Memphis State (as it was called then) was a football powerhouse and was expecting a bowl bid. Back then there were about 1/4th the bowls there are now.
Memphis State got the cold shoulder, no bowl bids. They were highly pissed; and, as back then bowl bids came out early there were still two games in the regular season to go. Unfortunately UL traveled to Memphis that weekend (after bids were out) and UL wasn't very good.
Memphis State was piling it on Louisville at every opportunity just to let the various bowl officials know how dumb they had been to leave them out of a bowl. I don't recall the score at the time, but late in the 4th quarter Coach Corso had had enough and he ran on to the field to "throw the towel in", which he did by tossing a white towel on to the field.
I don't recall if that garnered UL a penalty or not; but, it really didn't matter as Memphis State went on to score several more times even calling a time out with less than 10 seconds to go to set up a last touchdown. They stomped us 69-19 at that game.
So, UL took revenge that fall giving Memphis State the first in a long line of Basketball defeats to UL by large margins in those early days.
The rivalry was intense in both major sports through 3 conferences and 3.5 decades until UL left CUSA to go to the Big East in 2006.
Swamp Daddy
