The 80 Cotton Bowl and it’s not remotely close! Especially considering what happened exactly one year before that in the very same end zone. I was there for both.
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I know we used to play SEC schools in the 60’s when we were an indendent, but I never heard of an invitation to join.
Was the SWC considered more powerful than the SEC at that time?
Depends on what state you are asking the question in.
UH had success against Mississippi. I distinctly remember the game Manning broke his forearm against UH. UH also had some close games against Alabama.
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There was a story at one time about 1970’ish that a&m was talking to the SEC about UH and a$m joining the SEC.
Just a story.
Possibly believable since a$m hated ut even back then.
The 1980 win over Nebraska was great and that was probably our best team ever,
Our loss that year was at home to Texas and probably cost us a national title.
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One of my favorites is the bowl game when Case Keenum threw 42 passes in the 1st half and we only ran the ball ONCE, a draw play to Chris Sims.
It was played in the Cotton Bowl vs Penn State. I think it was the Ticket City Bowl.
It was Tony Levine’s first game as coach as Scumlin was off to Collieland.
Kliff Kingsbury was the offensive coordinator.
I recall Kliff talking later about the game planning and he said he knew we couldn’t run on their D-line so we were just going to pass, pass and more pass (just so happened we had the NCAA career leading passer, which didn’t hurt.) We were also aided by their defensive strategy to play soft zone so we would either dink em to death or Patrick Edwards and Tyron Carrier would streak past them.
I did love the Pitt game too when we recovered three onside kicks - excellent special teams.
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IIRC, Penn St. was called for a penalty, something like illegal touching or something you don’t hear often. I remember everyone around me laughing since it was the Sandusky year.
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That Penn State bow game was not bad. We worked over Penn State. Had Westboro Baptist church outside the stadium protesting Paterno and Annise Parker.
I do not believe that the sec interest came because of the Astrodome but for the fact that we beat sec teams regularly. Prior to our “official” invite into the SWC in 1972, started playing in 1976 we beat sec teams often, hence the interest into giving UH an invitation to join the sec. HCBY was friend with the uta HC, royal at the time. This is why we joined the SWC. Being more regional for us made sense. We were naive enough at the time to think uta would let us win on the field. History tell us this was the wrong move. Yes like it or not it was the wrong decision. Why? Had we been in the sec it would have been harder for uta/ncaa implants to “control” us. Both uta and atm are now in the sec.
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First of the 4 Cotton Bowl games we attended . . . . .
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I’ve mentioned this before but Coach BY gave me one of the most amazing summation of a bowl game (BlueBonnet Bowl) that I’ll never forget. We were playing Colorado (Big 8) and Lcan’t figure out what we are trying to do. But the Colorado DL who was creating havoc with our defensive line was being carried off.
The Next day, I watch hBY (we lost) explaining that the UC DL was creating havoc with our executions.So he explains that he calls a play where Riley Odoms (AA) streaks from the right corner all across the field to bold the other direction to crash into UC (AA) DL.
The result, they carried him off the field. Then BY simply states, the DL was killing us, we
just wanted to show the young man that we knew how to play football too.
That’s my kind of coach and I think CWF is built that way.
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Cmon, thats not true. All through the 60s we had played Ole Miss, Miss State, Georgia, Auburn and Tennessee and had built a good relationship with SEC. But SWC was where Texas and Aggie played, and they had won 3 national championships in the 60s and were every bit as respected as the SEC back then. We had serious talks with both in early 70s, but SWC is where we eventually chose to go. I remember how exciting it was to line up and play Texas and Aggie every year!
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You mean Charles Sims. Chris Sims was a UT quarterback.
Fantastic stuff Jerry. THANK YOU for sharing.
Thanks, the play BY called looked like a chinese fire drill to me. In fact, I think you would call it a crack back block whichi illegal now. Seriously, BY calls one play just to take this guy out of the game. The UC tackle was chasing everything down until Odoms slammed into him. Stunning really
1976 Cotton
1979 Cotton
2015 Peach
2014 Armed Forces (actually the game sucked until Farrow ran over the Pitt LB for a TD in the 4th quarter)
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As was I.
Back when we were independent, I don’t remember The cows or the farmers being seen as our rivals.
Question: If we were beating SEC teams regularly do you think the SEC would have given UH an invite WITHOUT the Dome?
Probably not.
At the time, the Dome was the “it” stadium and would have enhanced our entry into the SEC. Too bad we missed that opportunity.
Our attendance flourished due to the dual attraction of the new, state-of-art stadium design and Yeoman’s Veer offense kicking into high gear.
It was a one-two punch combination.
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