Then you don’t have a realistic view of UH football. We have won two… only two… conference championships in 20 years. We have never dominated anyone consistently except for maybe Rice in modern history (since CUSA inception). We have one good year… one! and everyone thinks all of a sudden we are something that we aren’t.
The gap that separates Houston and Tulane is much smaller than the gap between Houston and Ohio State or Oklahoma. We have not “fallen.” We are where we always have been, namely a university that struggles with fan support outside of a hardcore group, a program that struggles to keep any coach with a pulse, a team that is good enough to go bowling, and every once in a while, wins a championship.
Are we one of the better G5 teams, one of the better AAC teams? Yes, but we haven’t “fallen” anywhere, this is where we have always been.
Cary, I normally agree with you, but have to disagree this time. A 200 point fall in the Dow Jones on any given day looks a lot different to a day trader than it does a long term investor. Just depends on persective.
You’re absolutely right that historically it doesn’t sound like much of a fall, but lately it does. Tulane has had 2 winning seasons in the last 15 years. 7-6 in 2013 and 8-5 in 2002. If you go back even further, it’s even more dismal other than their 12-0 season in 1998.
Houston was a giant suck-fest for a long time, but in recent history it has been much better and the expectations have risen accordingly. When I was a student from '98 - '02, I rarely went to a game expecting a win. Now I expect to win pretty much all of them. I, for one, don’t want to dismiss the records from the last 10 years because the 10 years prior to that massively skew the averages down. Seems a lot more exciting to expect the best even if it means there are a few years of disappointment. But maybe that’s just me.
I agree with where we are, but being in a conference with Tulane, Tulsa, Temple, smu, and UConn
ain’t where I want UH to be (I doubt you do either)…but losing to any of these teams is NOT acceptable, I don’t care who their coaches are !!
Of course we don’t know the start times for the Saturday games yet which has a lot to do with how “good” the schedule is but overall I think it is better than 2016 or 2017. Conference front-loaded the bye week on week 5. I guess they think they can average out the last three years and tell us our “average” bye week was week 8 or something.
Only two Thursday games and the first is the game after the bye so our bye week is almost two weeks long…I don’t like that long of a layoff.
The other Thursday is Tulane November 15, 5 days after we play Temple at home. Temple will be a very physical game so I wish we had a full week. Nevertheless, no matter how beat up we are, I think the revenge factor vs Tulane will be so high as to make whatever nagging injuries the guys have seem like nothing.
Memphis on Black Friday. Nothing new but the Thursday Tulane game gives us 8 days to get ready. Another revenge game at their house!
Go Coogs!!!
BannedUserForAbuse
(User was banned for sending threatening/abusive messages.)
48
I disagree about the long layoff before the Thursday game. I think if you are going to have a Thursday game, it should be right after the bye week. This goes for the pros too. If the NCAA and the NFL were really serious about preventing injuries, they would not let teams play games on short rest like that.
Obviously, the non-conference games against Arizona and Texas Tech will be difficult, but the second half of the season will test the Cougars. Starting with a trip to Annapolis to play Navy, Houston gets USF at home, at SMU, home vs. Temple, home vs. Tulane, and at Memphis to end the year. All of those teams have the potential to compete for a conference crown.
Can’t disagree with a lot of the take aways in the article. Tulsa and Tulane on Thursday is a total trash move for attendance at least give us some upper echelon teams.
There’s only one possible upside to playing Tulane and Tulsa on Thursday night. Those two games on ESPN will tell us exactly how valuable UH is to the conference’s TV deal. Nobody’s tuning in to watch Tulsa or Tulane - the TV ratings will be almost exclusively a function of UH’s stature. If we pull numbers comparable to the ACC/P5 games on Thursday night, that would be a good result.
The Thursday Tulane game is on 5 days rest and yes, that is not good for the athletes. Teams lose some rhythm during long layoffs so already I’m expecting a slow offensive start to the Tulsa game. 12 days off before the Thursday Tulsa game makes that a “trap” game imho. We lost to Tulane last season after our bye week and not playing for a full 14 days.
I’m not so sure. Success on the field (4-0 going in to the Tulsa game for starters) will compensate for the lack of a marquee name on Thursday night. For Coog Fans, there is no excuse. Both games are a shot at redemption for the team and everyone needs to be there and be loud.
Here’s hoping we beat Arizona and Tech handily and that those teams both go on to do great things the rest of the year. If we can make this a truly special year (no more than 1 loss, conference championship, NY6 bowl victory), we are going to be in such a great position for 2019 with OU and Washington State on the schedule. I know, I know. It’s optimistic. But I can’t help myself. I fully expect to be told I shouldn’t expect greatness, so bring it on.
