Charles Huff seems to be a perfect fit at Memphis.
Huff knows what it takes to win a conference championship, having led Marshall to a Sun Belt title in 2024. He can also turn a program around, as he guided Southern Miss to a 7-5 overall record and bowl-eligibility in 2025 after the Golden Eagles went 1-11 the year before.
But now he’s at Memphis, a team that doesn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Far from it. The Tigers haven’t endured a losing season since 2013, their first year in the American.
But for all that winning, Memphis hasn’t won a conference title since 2019. Memphis has been one of the best teams in the American and has appeared poised to appear in the AC Championship and even the College Football Playoff at different points the last couple years. But the Tigers haven’t quite gotten there.
Memphis fans are starved for their program to fulfill that potential. Huff’s resume indicates he could be the right person for the job.
“You have to acknowledge we have a good foundation. That’s the first thing,” Huff said in an interview with HERO Sports. “The second thing is you’ve got to find out where the gaps are in your entire program, not just on-field performance, not just one game or two games. It’s, where are the gaps in our entire organization that show up on Saturdays?”
Memphis’ Resources & Facilities
Huff noted, from his tenures at Marshall and Southern Miss, he knows how best to invest his time. Through experience, he learned what he may have spent too much focus on that didn’t affect on-field performance and what he needs to pay more attention to that does impact wins and losses.
Huff and his staff immediately identified ways to make those changes when he arrived in Memphis. He listed off several facets: nutrition, strength and conditioning, personnel, management of revenue share, class times, rehabilitation timing, and other resources.
“I know we talked about closing the gap, but that’s a holistic thing,” Huff said. “You’ve got to look at the gaps in all areas of your organization because you don’t just go out on Saturday and make a mistake. That mistake started somewhere. Was it a lack of nutrition and taking care of your body? … Are you minimizing the opportunity for these guys to go through academics smoothly through the week so that they’re ready to go on Saturdays? Are we investing in the right guys? Is the locker room culture dysfunctional because people think people are getting paid too much or too little?
“All of those things matter. So we’ve done that. I think we’ve got a good plan. Obviously it’s not going to be easy, but I do think we’re really close to closing the gap and getting over that hump. And then once you get over it, you’ve got to figure out what do we need to do to stay over it, right? Because no one’s going to be happy with one championship in six years. So we’ve got to figure out a way once we get over it, once we do close the gap, how do we keep it closed?”
Huff has joined programs where the teams were great, but the ceiling in the locker room leaked, or the players often ate junk food, or the rehab facilities weren’t up to par, or players lacked access to mental health resources.
None of those are tangible factors for fans to account for on Saturdays in October. But they add up.
“I’ve learned that there’s a lot more that goes into player development and player performance outside of who you recruit or how good the player himself is,” Huff said. “There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes things. So when we got here, we kind of attacked those things first. Obviously you’ve got to recruit. That’s a non-negotiable, but you’ve got to make sure that you have a proper meal plan. You’ve got to make sure you have proper facilities.
“You’ve got to make sure the kids can take pride in what they wear and where they sleep and what they eat and where they work out, where they meet, where they sit. So those experiences allowed me to come in with a different type of perspective. It wasn’t necessarily coming in, trying to figure out what position we needed to improve the most. It was what, holistically, can we improve.”
Memphis’ Roster
Huff isn’t having to build something from nothing at Memphis. That applies to facilities and resources, but also roster construction.
Seventeen Southern Miss players followed Huff and his staff to Memphis. That includes HERO Sports Group of Five All-American defensive lineman J’Mond Tapp.
Huff said their presence helps in the locker room. Those players who know Huff well can help translate things and offer insights. It also helps with recruiting, as those players can tell Huff whether they would fit the program.
And Memphis has been pretty effective when it comes to bringing in new talent. The Tigers have the best class of incoming players in the American and are top five in the Group of Six when accounting for high school recruits and transfers, per 247Sports.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” Huff said. “I think obviously with the resources we have here, it allows us to kind of get moving on some of those things faster. And I know a lot of times people think just about revenue share and NIL, and all that’s great, but we’re talking more about a nutrition plan to start to change their bodies. We’re talking more of resources or facilities-wise so that we can rehab and so that we can monitor their progress the right way. So those things have been great. Really impressed with where we are so far, and now we’ll be able to kind of litmus test some of those benchmarks now that we’re going in the spring.”
Memphis’ Coaching Staff
Huff’s coaching staff is a mix of individuals who came from Southern Miss and who are from other programs. For example, offensive coordinator Kevin Decker was at Old Dominion previously, assistant head coach/running backs coach Telly Lockette was at USM last season, and defensive coordinator Lance Guidry was Huff’s DC at Marshall before going to Miami to be the Hurricanes’ DC and is now back with Huff at Memphis.
Memphis also had the capacity to hire more assistants like quality control coaches who can help the players be more detailed, Huff said. More people helps his staff be more intentional with every individual.
“I tell my staff all the time, most of the time it’s the adults who screw it up,” Huff said. “The players will do exactly what you tell them to do or exactly what you allow them to do. The adults are the ones who don’t take care of the details, which allows the players to have an out or to miss something.”
When asked if anything has been a pleasant surprise for him since he arrived at Memphis, Huff pointed to the support the Tigers have.
And that has shown up in the myriad ways Huff highlighted that can help the program incrementally improve.
“There are a lot of people who want Memphis and this athletic program, this football program, to do well. And they are fully engaged in making that happen,” Huff said. “It’s not just clicks on Twitter or it’s not just words in a newspaper. There are people who are actually rolling their sleeves up and working to make sure that we and these young men have everything they need to be successful. And that’s been a pleasant surprise. It also is motivating because you want to help those people get return on their investment, not just monetarily, but collectively. People give their time, people give their effort. You want them to get a return.”
The Tigers hope one of those returns is a conference title in the near future. And Huff seems to know how to get them there.
