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The Roost Podcast | Ep 204 – 2025 Rice Football Opponent Previews: Memphis

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The 2025 Rice Football season previews march on. This week, we’re joined by Bryan Moss of Tiger Sports Report (ON3) to talk about the upcoming Memphis season.

The sixth edition of our Rice Football opponent summer preview series is in your podcast feeds. Returning guest Bryan Moss, who covers Memphis for Tiger Sports Report, joins the show to refresh us on the Tigers and an eventful offseason for the team, which must replace star quarterback Seth Hennigan and a host of other talented players. Listen in.

You can find previous episodes on the podcast page. For now, give a listen to Episode 204.

Episode Notes

DCTF

The Roost Podcast is now part of the Dave Campbell’s Republic of Football Podcast Network. You’ll still get the same content with the same hosts, but now under the DCTF banner.

Homefield

We’re thrilled to partner with Homefield Apparel, the premier proprietor of college football clothing. First-time buyers can use the code ROOST for 15% off their order. The Owls hoodie is a personal favorite as is the Luv-Ya-Owls shirt. Make sure you check out the sailor hat (pictured below) as you shop the Rice collection or pick up something else (or both)!

Homefield

Patreon

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Rice Football Opponent Preview: Memphis

  • A program in a good place reloading on the fly
  • The Transfer Portal and a talented Memphis roster
  • The pecking order in the Group of 5 today
  • No defense to speak of
  • Special teams is a question mark too?
  • But the offense will be good
  • The Lightning Round

Where can you find us?

The Roost Podcast is part of the Dave Campbell’s Republic of Football Podcast Network. You can find this podcast and all of our partner podcasts on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

Subscribe on Patreon for exclusive Rice football recruiting updates, practice notes and more.

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Rice Baseball 2025: MLB Owls Update – July 9

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The 2025 MLB season is underway and Rice baseball alums are making the most of their time in The Show. Here’s the latest from the MLB Owls.

Dane Myers – Miami Marlins

It was a rather modest week for Dane Myers, who has kept up his impressive start to the season, both with his bat and in the field. He was held to three hits over the last six games with two RBI. An All-Star candidate, Myers did not earn a spot in the midsummer classic.

Through July 9, Myers is hitting .283 with 12 extra-base hits, 13 walks and 46 strikeouts. His OPS is .721 and he’s collected 22 RBI.

Tristan Gray – Chicago White Sox

Myers was briefly joined at the Major League level by another former Rice baseball slugger, Tristan Gray, who the White Sox called up on July 7 as a part of roster juggling that saw him with the team for just a day. Gray was promptly reverted to the AAA affiliate on July 8.

Injured List

Anthony Rendon – Los Angeles Angels

Rendon is slated to miss a significant amount of time following him surgery this spring. The bad news is another bump in an injury-plagued stint with the Angels; Rendon missed a chunk of last season with an oblique strain.

Matt Canterino – Twins AAA

Canterino was thought to have a real chance to crack the big league roster at some point this season, converting himself to a reliver this offseason in hopes of limiting the stress on his arm and preserving his health. Unfortunately, he’s set to miss a third consecutive season, undergoing shoulder surgery in early March. The Twins since released him and signed him to a minor league contract while he rehabs.

Knocking on the Door

The following Owls began the season in AAA:

  • Tristan Gray – Charlotte Knights (White Sox)
  • Evan Kravetz – Louisville Bats (Reds)
  • Glenn Otto – Sugar Land Space Cowboys (Astros)
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Rice Football: Transfer Portal and “Designated Student-Athletes”

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Rice football has experienced some attrition following the opening of a one-time Transfer Portal window this week for select “Designated Student-Athletes”.

The rollout of transformative change for college sports has not transpired without a few bumps along the road. Rice Athletics is prepared to meet the new world order with some important action items, as detailed in this thorough review earlier this month. Now, a new Transfer Portal window has impacted Rice Football. What is a “Designated Student-Athlete,” and what does it mean for the Owls?

How We Got Here

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2025 Rice Football Season Preview: Cornerback

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Next up in our 2025 Rice Football Season Preview: cornerback. Here’s our breakdown of the Owls’ plans for the group this season.

The corner room is going to be brand new in 2025, something Rice football hasn’t had to experience in quite some time. Fortunately, the Transfer Portal has allowed for some veteran leadership to be injected into this position group during the offseason, but that hasn’t removed all the question marks in the crucial defensive spot. How well will this new-look room adjust to so many moving parts?

Rice Football Preseason Preview: Check out the rest of the series here.

This piece is part of our 2025 Rice Football Season Preview. Get access to it, as well as all other preview posts such as positional breakdowns, depth chart and schedule analysis and more when you subscribe on Patreon today. 

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** Photo credit: Maria Lysaker **

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QB Flux marks 2025 American Athletic Conference Landscape

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New faces and unknown commodities mark the state of quarterback play in the American Athletic Conference in 2025.

The days of running it back with the same starting quarterback at the Group of 5 level might not be over just yet, but they’re certainly becoming less and less frequent as player movement accelerates and the college football world becomes more connected and informed. That new-world reality is particularly stark when assessing the American Athletic Conference quarterback landscape for the upcoming 2025 season.

Among the 14 AAC teams, three distinct categories can be defined.

Starting Fresh

The AAC will be replacing some marquee names at the position in 2025. Seth Hennigan has finally run out of eligibility following a record-setting career at Memphis. Tulane’s Darrien Mensah was one of the more high-profile transfer stories of the offseason, signing with Duke. Potential Heisman darkhorse Bryson Daley has graduated from Army and the gunslinging Chandler Morris is no longer at North Texas.

Conservatively, that list includes four of the top six players at the position from a season ago. Tack on roster reshuffling at Charlotte, Rice and Florida Atlantic and you’ve got seven of the 14 programs in the league who will be starting new quarterbacks in 2025. When it comes time to sort out a potential pecking order the sheer number of new faces at the most important position will make that a challenge.

Returning, but Unrefined

Consistency, especially at the quarterback position, is usually viewed as a positive and while that’s probably the case for the next batch of program’s it’s not as if the guys they’re bringing back are slam dunk, top-of-the-line Group of 5 quarterbacks.

Temple (Evan Simon), UAB (Jalen Kitna), Tulsa (Kirk Francis) and East Carolina (Kaitin Houser) make up the returning quarterbacks who produced mixed results at their programs a season ago. Francis and Simon completed less than 60 percent of their passes, Kitna and Houser threw double-digit interceptions. Add on coaching changes at Temple and ECU (albeit, hiring their interim head coach) and you’ve got more uncertainty to deal with.

Any or all of those four players may improve their game in 2025. That’s what their respective staffs will be expecting. But it’s not a sure thing and there’s no guarantee this group isn’t better than some of the reshuffling the programs in the first group did during the offseason.

Returning Studs

Which brings us to the shortest list: returning studs. At the forefront of this group is Navy quarterback Blake Horvath and UTSA signal caller Owen McCown. Horvath spurred one of the more improbable turn-around seasons in the AAC last year, leading Navy to 10 wins. McCown led all returning AAC passers with 3,422 yards passing last season and 25 touchdowns.

South Florida’s Byrum Brown gets a nod in this group, but with an asterisk of sorts. He was tremendous in 2023 before missing most of 2024 with an injury. When he did get on the field, he wasn’t nearly as impressive. He deserves at least some benefit of the doubt that a fully healthy version of himself belongs in this group, but even with him included, the list of bonafide stars at this position is extremely thin.

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