In this day and age of college football, there aren't a lot of quarterbacks staying at one program for four years as a starter. But Seth Henigan is.

"I looked at all the top quarterbacks in college football, and 90% of them are in the portal," Henigan said in an interview with the Commercial Appeal on Wednesday. "So I wondered, am I weird? I'm different for staying at the same program for four years. I was definitely wondering if that was a good thing or not."

The Memphis quarterback announced on social media last week that he would "run it back" for his final year of eligibility in 2024. He's poised to break almost all of the Tigers' passing records by the end of next season. He said Wednesday he wanted to make his intentions "crystal clear" heading into their game against Iowa State in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Dec. 29.

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Still, he said it wasn't an easy decision.

"It was really tough," he said. "It's kind of stressful, and it's a hard decision to make since there's so many factors floating around as far as leaving or staying. Especially in this day and age, as a Group of Five quarterback in particular, you're playing at a lower level. There's people, there's money floating around, there's opportunity to play at Power Five, in good situations.

"There's a lot of things that look shiny and look good on paper that you're like, 'Oh, I want to pursue that.' But at the same time, you've got to realize, me especially, I just took a step back, and I know I have it good here and have good friends here. And I've been here a long time. So I just figured it'd be best for me to stay here."

Henigan is part of a class of players that entered college in 2021 and thus don't have a "COVID year," or an extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA. So 2024 will be his last year of college football.

It's the same for Roc Taylor, the Tigers' leading wide receiver, who also announced last week that he'd be back for 2024. He said in a social media post that he had "unfinished business."

"I think we did pretty good this season," Taylor told the Commercial Appeal. "So I wanted to come back for another year, and hope to do better. Conference championship-type thing. That's the unfinished business."

Taylor had 61 catches for 981 yards and four touchdowns this season. That was almost three times his career receiving yardage total entering this season, and he's poised to be one of the best receivers in the American Athletic Conference next year.

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Henigan led the conference with 3,519 passing yards this season, and threw 28 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He also rushed for four touchdowns. Tulane quarterback Michael Pratt has not announced his intentions and UTSA's Frank Harris is out of eligibility. Those were the two quarterbacks selected to the AAC first team ahead of Henigan, so it's possible he could enter next season as the top passer in the conference.

Henigan and Taylor spoke about their respective decisions before both electing to stay, and Henigan said he might have left if Taylor hadn't decided to stay in Memphis as well. Now they're helping to re-recruit players who might be thinking about leaving, and recruit new additions from the transfer portal.

Henigan knows his college football journey is a unique one, and he'll never know what exact opportunities were available in the wide world of the portal, with the current landscape of name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities also ever changing.

"At the end of the day, I didn't come to college football for money," he said. "That just kind of happened whenever I was a college athlete. It's a cool thing, for sure, for athletes to be able to get paid nowadays. But I just came for college football."

Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @thejonahdylan.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis football's Seth Henigan says of staying: 'I have it good here'