How about the winner gets the Space City Trophy.
Not sure UCF qualifies as “inner city.” It’s located in an unincorporated section of Orange County, and is more than 13 miles from downtown Orlando on the Alafaya Trail. It has over 800 acres of woodland on campus.
There is a separate downtown campus, but the main campus is definitely NOT “inner city.”
More SUBURBAN than anything else.
Given its 35 mi proximity to Cape Canaveral, I can imagine some sort of “space” rivalry, but I can’t lie. I do NOT consider UCF to be much of a rival.
It’s located many states away, and is basically a suburban party school (Playboy magazine ranked it in the Top Ten “Party” School rankings) located in a tourist/resort area. NOTHING like UH.
The TEXAS schools are our natural geographical rivals. That’s Baylor, TCU, and Tech. Drivable road games. Former SWC foes. And in Baylor, we could have ONE HECK of a basketball rivalry!!!
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The northern schools may have done what OU wanted to some degree but were also acting in what they saw as their best interests.
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There are a lot of reports that, even without Texas in the picture, Fertitta had to make a lot of calls to get us in. That they were literally considering an 11 team conference without us. If true, that says a lot about how valuable they consider us. I’m hoping last year helped with that.
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I was not privy to negotiation talks, but if you were looking to add a school with potential to dominate, great recruiting, great facilities and not far away without the UT ego, you found it.
I really think that’s why there was reticence to let us in. Schools like Baylor and Tech know that we have great potential and could cause problems for them in recruiting Houston.
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Actually, I heard at least one rumor that it was literally DAN PATRICK calling to intervene that helped get us in.
Never saw it from any official source, and I don’t know if it’s true, but that was rumored for a time.
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Might have been him, too. I know he worked pretty hard on our behalf in 2016.
That’s why UH, SMU & TCU were all left out of the Big 12 originally…
The traditional universities around the state had to compete with all of those schools to recruit Houston and DFW…
Does Vince Young win a title for UH instead of UT if we were in the Big 12 from the start…?
Recruits like him are why we were cut out from the start.
Then there was Matt Hogan’s 51-yd field goal that beat Tulsa and the toad* in 2019. What a great moment!!!
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That was GREAT!
And we hung 100 on them when Dr. Phil played for them… 
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This is going to come as a shock to some but I don’t think anyone wanted us in the B12.
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We all know why that private CHURCH school got in.
It’s not rocket science.
Read on.
UH and SMU averaged about 15k fans. I think that had a lot more to do with it.
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It was pretty terrible timing.
Had we been better, not only might our conference situation have improved (ehhh… probably not immediately but maybe) but we might have been able to take advantage of the absence of an NFL program to get some traction.
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Baylor was the safe option, not a threat to win in football or basketball (and continued to not win a B12 game for 6 years). UH was good entering SWC in 1976, and winning Cotton Bowls against Nebraska(when they were good) and Maryland and close loss to ND. Beating Texas and the Dome losing its luster cost us big time. Hopefully the fans we had in the '80s will come back with B12. Yeoman held out some of our starters in 1975 to make 1976 special, Dana does not have that luxury.
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Memphis in hoops is the one close to a rival to us. But wait until we swing into Big 12 play and watch the insults and hatred come alive
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If you want to establish a rivalry UCF then they’re as good as any. But I’m sure they consider USF their rival. I know there’s hatred there on both sides.
I think a sort of natural rival is Tech. Both schools disrespect each other. Both needed help getting in the B12. Both are outside the PUF. And both are in the process of elevating their academics. Plus there’s some history there. Not to mention we rub elbows with them every day in Houston.
I would love to see us both getting to the point where we could meet in the last game of the season every year. Instead of winning a trophy the loser has to put on display a giant Mouse. The loser would be labled the “Country Mouse” or the “City Mouse.”
The UCF “rivalry” is a natural. Both large cities, large universities, playing each other enough times and both in “space” cities.
The UCF/USF will always be there, but USF is in another conference. UCF will begin to dominate the state of Florida which they are trending in that direction already!
The TT, BU, and TCU thing will happen naturally as we were all in the SWC conference together. Once we are in and effect the recruiting of BU, TT, TCU AND OSU, it will become nastier as we will begin to dominate. Let the fun begin!
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We’ve been in the same conference as SMU for near two decades without a real rivalry developing. And that was despite playing them every year in e same division.