We were a big, tough, athletic football team, especially on defense. I bought seats from a Hog friend of the family. I was with two guys that worked for my grandfather. The seats were 40 yard line about 20 rows from the top…deeeep in Hog country. The Hogs aren’t hospitable when they lose.
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Yes we were. Grady Turner was one tough, strong as an ox dude. He would just throw blockers aside ‘til he could find the one with the ball.
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I remember I got up early that Saturday in anticipation of watching that game on ABC. We were amazingly athletic on defense with Hodge, Proctor, Mitchell, Bradley, Turner, Cook, etc. We only gave up 11 ppg that season.
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Quintessential Yeoman defense. Large and leathery up front, dominant at LB. Its hard to translate this for the young guns. We were once a defensive power.
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In those days, home or away, we expected to win every time we stepped on the field, no matter the opponent.
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In 80’ I came to H on a Thursday to see family. I had my sister drive me to campus. I sat there for an hour waiting for it to quit raining. I watched through the fence. Never seen a college practice before. Good Lord, did Yeoman have rough practices!!! I couldn’t tell who everyone was in practice gear but what could tell you is the QBs practicing that day were getting absolutely clobbered. I left thinking, damn!! College football is rougher that even I thought. SWC baby!!!
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1978 game - aTm - Astrodome - early first quarter. One of our players got hurt on a play on the Aggie sideline and was down. Our trainer, Tom Wilson, goes from our sideline to the Aggie sideline. He asked the injured player what was wrong. I cannot remember exactly what the injury was, but it was either like a separated shoulder or broken arm. The player tells him what the injury was, and Tom Wilson said “there isn’t anything wrong with your legs is there?”, and made him walk off the field. From what I heard, the Aggies were staring in horror at our toughness, and the game was over right there. The heavily favored Aggies were down 33-0 at the half and were never a threat that night.
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I’ll just leave this here…
And the play where Greg Ward Jr dove across the goalline to win the game but he fumbled it a millisecond before crossing the plane is permanently burned into my memory…
Yeah… UCF is a rival school.
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Almost said yesterday that that’s the only game against them that I actually remember (definitely unforgettable!), which to me contraindicates an existing rivalry.
Sort of like Tulane and the fake knee (though more mentionable games against Tulane)
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I think the closest thing we’ve had to rivals in the last 25 years are Memphis in the AAC and Tulsa in Conference USA. In both cases, it seemed year after year our game would decide the division so even before the season started you knew it was likely to be very important. Added to that with Tulsa they had Toad Graham and we had the legendary Flu Bowl, and with Memphis they had that winning streak against us I was anxious to avenge.
But neither of those games pass the ultimate test: Would fans (and even non-fans) be disappointed if you stopped scheduling them? The answer there is no. It could have been, but we (UH, the other school, and our conferences) failed to cultivate the rivalry.
You could also make a case for USM and SMU being a rivalry, but same verdict.
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UCF and Cincy are not our rivals. If we don’t have a game against nobody cares. Our rivals are
TT, TCU, and Baylor. If we don’t have games against them everybody is going to care.
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for me it is TCU and TT in that order. Any losses to them will sting a bit more than other losses
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When is the last time we played TCU or Baylor in football…?
I’d put Tech on the list of rivals because of SWC AND the win by the Keenum era Coogs… But Baylor and TCU fans DON’T GIVE A DAMN about playing us.
We haven’t played Baylor since 1995 season… Not a rival.
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This is right. for a rivalry, you need buy-in from both sides. Which I don’t think we have from the other Texas schools. On the CSN board when asked about who they looked forward to playing, not sure any of their fans named us.
If we beat them a couple of times, though, especially in the right circumstances, then I think there is more potential rivalry than with Cincinnati or Iowa State. When I talk about cultivating rivalries, one of the big things I mean is setting up matchups for that to start happening (annual games, preferably in November, among programs with good rivalry potential). Historically we and/or our conferences have done a poor job of that.
But even if they do that, we have to win. Competitiveness alone won’t do it (else UH would have had more of a rivalry with UTEP and Tulane, who seemed to step up against us), but it’s a necessary component (otherwise it ends up like UH vs Rice)
There’s also the one the year before where Greenberry dropped a pass that would have won the game for us.
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The B12 disdain came mostly from UT, schools outside of Texas actually saw the benefit of being able to recruit Houston. UH will be a diamond in the rough in the B12, already shining pretty bright in basketball and football is ready, Olympic sports have always held their own, and with the med school and endowment rising, the school on the whole is rising. If UT puts in UT-Houston, they would probably go straight to CUSA, and once again they would cause a mess.
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Not sure about that. Reports were that the northern schools blocked us, and we definitely heard from coaches at Oklahoma State and Kansas State and a former coach at OU that UH in the Big 12 would hurt their recruiting.
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The little calves suckling at the teet said what the cow said.
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I disagree with those who think that UCF/UH can’t become a traditional rivalry. It’s interstate like other big rivalries (USC-ND) and might have a more national appeal that an intrastate game. (Intrastate rivalries can have a local yokel feel about them). Both are large inner-city schools. Comparatively speaking, we’re both have relatively young athletic programs (certainly not Ivy League, Big-10 old). Both areas can claim connections to the space program (i.e. call the game the Space Bowl) which could be played up to have national appeal. I’m not a marketer, but I think that a good market program could find a lot of reasons to build up the game publicity-wise and turn it into a traditional rivalry.
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The schools are similar, and the Space City tie in goes well with the rivalry. I am sure there will plenty of “Houston we have a problem” quotes