The varsity teams of the University of Memphis have been moderately successful. The most known of them are probably the two basketball teams and the men’s soccer team.
The visual symbolism behind the Memphis Tigers logo is utterly transparent. What else can better represent the spirit of such a team than a tiger?
The current emblem was introduced in 1994 and has remained virtually unchanged ever since. It features a tiger in blue, orange, and white. The creature on the Memphis Tigers logo is leaping from behind a large blue “M” with white and blue trim.
What are Memphis Tigers?
Memphis Tigers is the name of an athletic program of the University of Memphis in Tennessee. The program is composed of twenty men/s and women/s teams, competing in various sports disciplines, including Basketball, Baseball, indoor and outdoor Track, and Field, Soccer, and several more. Memphis Tigers compete in the first division of the NCAA.
The logo of the athletic program from the University of Memphis, used for two years in the 1960s, featured a blue and white image of the tiger’s head, with the animal showing its teeth in the open mouth. The drawing was pretty detailed, with lots of blue lines, making the tiger look realistic.
The redesign of 1965 has introduced a bright caricaturist badge, which stayed with the Memphis Tigers for almost seven years. It was an orange and black tiger, drawn in full size, and turned to the right. Unlike the tiger from the previous badge, strong and aggressive, the new one looked very friendly and even playful.
The logo, used by the athletic teams from 1972 to 1979 was based on a bold blue MSU lettering with a double white and blue outline. The letters of the abbreviation were set diagonally, going down to the right. The lettering was executed in a traditional colleges and universities square serif typeface, with thick lines and straight cuts.
In 1969 the blue square abbreviation gets a bright graphical addition — a leaping tiger in orange and blue, with some small white details. The animal is jumping from behind the middle of the lettering, with its paws open and ready to grab a victim. The tiger on this initial version of the badge we all can see today was drawn in a pretty naive way, with bold uneven lines all over the head and the body.
The redesign of 1989 has introduced a refined version of the Memphis Tigers logo, with the color palette slightly brightened up, the tiger getting a more dangerous look and cleaner contours, and the lettering getting slightly smaller and a bit condensed. Overall, the composition of the badge remained the same, but the logo started looking more modern and confident.
In 1993 the logo of the athletic program was redesigned again, with the MSU lettering replaced by the single “M”, and the tiger was redrawn. It was still the leaping animal, executed in a blue and orange color palette, but with bolder and cleaner lines, and more visible smaller details, such as claws and teeth. As for the letter, it was still written in the same serif font, as was used for the MSU abbreviation.
The redesign of 2021 has removed the orange color from the Memphis Tigers logo palette, replacing it with a medium-dark shade of gray. The tiger was redrawn again, with its eyes getting bigger and brighter and the face evoking even more dangerous feelings than on the previous version of the badge.
The men’s basketball team of the University of Memphis has been the NCAA Tournament Runner-ups twice. The Tigers have made 26 appearances in the NCAA Tournament and 18 appearances in the National Invitation Tournament (the information is true for the fall of 2019). Their head coach is Penny Hardaway.
The women’s team can boast seven NCAA Tournament appearances. Their head coach is Melissa McFerrin, who has stayed at this position for eight consecutive seasons.
The highest achievement of the men’s soccer program has been the Conference USA championship they claimed in 2004.
BLUE
PANTONE: PMS 287 C
HEX COLOR: #003087;
RGB: (0, 48, 135)
CMYK: (100, 72, 0, 18)
GRAY
PANTONE: PMS 423 C
HEX COLOR: #898D8D;
RGB: (137, 141, 141)
CMYK: (0, 0, 0, 45)
ORANGE
PANTONE: PMS 130 U
HEX COLOR: #F8992E;
RGB: (248, 153, 46)
CMYK: (0, 47, 91, 0)