The teams compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the American Athletic Conference, except for the rifle team, which is a member of the single-sport Great America Rifle Conference.

When the Memphis State University first fielded a football team in the fall of 1912, no one had selected a nickname for the squad.

As time passed, the nickname "Tigers" was increasingly used, particularly in campus publications, but did not catch on with the newspapers downtown.

Under Coach Lester Barnard in 1922, Memphis's football team gave a ring of truth to that old student yell about Tigers.

The Tigers continued an era of excellence throughout the 1980s and went to the Final Four in 1985 losing to Villanova, the ultimate winner of the tournament.

The 1985 Final Four trip has since been vacated by the NCAA due to several recruiting violations committed by head coach Dana Kirk and his staff.

He led the Tigers to four NCAA tournament appearances in his first five years, but never advanced past the round of 32 and missed the postseason entirely in his sixth and seventh seasons.

The world record holder for the highest slam dunk (12 feet from floor to rim) is a former University of Memphis basketball forward, and current Harlem Globetrotter Michael Wilson.

They play home games at Elma Roane Fieldhouse Jamirah Shutes, a senior guard on the Memphis women’s basketball team, pleaded not guilty to an assault charge after she was accused of punching a Bowling Green player in the face following the Memphis Tigers' loss in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT) on March 24, 2023, officials confirmed.

The Conference USA championship the Tigers claimed in 2004 is a nice exclamation point for the program's different successes over the years.

As a player, Grant was a three-time NAIA All-America defender and was twice named the NAIA District V Player of the Year at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt. Grant received his bachelor's degree in leisure resources and facilities management at Green Mountain College and in 1993 and went on to play one season for the a semi-pro team called the Minnesota Thunder.

In 2005, the Tigers football team was led in the Motor City Bowl by DeAngelo Williams, a then-senior All-American running back and eventual first-round draft pick by the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.