THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF COMMITS ABOUT UT
AND A&M TURNING US IN TO THE NCAA. I KNOW
UT PULLED A LOT OF CRAP BUT I NEVER KNEW
OF A&M DOING MUCH. THEY HAD CHEATED BUT
COULD NOT AFFORD TO HAVE THE NCAA DOWN
HERE LOOKING AROUND. THEY TRIED TO HELP
US ON SEVERAL OCCATIONS. EARLY TRYING
TO GET US INTO THE SWC ALSO BAYLOR TRIED.
WE PLAYED A&M AND BAYLOR JUST ABOUT
EVERY YEAR. VERT SELDOM UT. A&M TRIED TO
HELP US INTO THE SEC. UNTIL WE GOT OUR
FOOT ON UTS NECK THEY NEVER HELPED US
AND NEVER WILL . THEY CHEATED BUT NO ONE
TALKED AT UT. YOU WERE RUINED IF YOU DID.
I WAS VERY INVOLVED BACK IN THE CBY DAYS
AND CJP DAYS.
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Yep, Aggies were on probation at times and UT turned them in as well. Was part of the reason that the Aggies wanted to get away from the Horns and finally did.
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I have a request to make and here is why.
Please change the front page format with “Welcome to Coogfans!” thread first and then have a dedicated Cougar Football History thread either before or after Cougar Football thread.
How often is it that posters ignore facts, history or common knowledge? 22 years have passed since we were in a P5. It is an eternity for some and a blip for others. In order to build a true fan base we have to teach where we come from and how we got to where we are today. It is very convenient for the local media or national media to push us under a rug. All of us on this website are proud of our past but how many millennial graduates even know that we were part of a P5?
Trolls take a very convenient approach to twist or ignore facts. Someone that does not know our own history is now lost, confused or now believes a lie.
EatemUp, 1Grayfox, red80 and many others are our history.
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I hate horn soooooooo much. Aggie not nearly as much. My mothers husband (not my father) was a junction boy. He roots for and goes to coog games. Not sure if it’s to pacify me though. Lol. In my time (80s on) horn has been the enemy. Horn is the only school that I know for a fact has actively been involved in subverting us.
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Totally agree.
They do have such a section already - it is titled “Classic Stories and UH History.” All the younger Coogs should study that very carefully; they would learn a lot!
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I know but clearly very few read it. Over and over again the U of H football thread is littered with posts that completely ignore our history. Changing the location might do it some good. Just saying.
Not a bad idear, we’ll look into it.
Yah, that never happened.
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Agreed, A&M has never cared for UH and vice versa…I do agree, however that UT has always been corrupt, but at the same time has always had the money and the political clout to stay out of trouble. Old Gray probably remembers the Daryl Shepard recruiting episode back in the '70s.
The Evil Empire thought it had the flashy quarterback all but signed, sealed and delivered…until we stepped in and gave him a chance to play early in an offense more suited for him.
Well, all of a sudden it miraculously came to light about his infamous new ride and all of a sudden the NCAA came a calling and we got into trouble.
Yet, at the time, a good friend of mine who was working for the Dallas Morning News, told me Shepard and his family were allowed to borrow the money from an Odessa bank, which was perfectly legal.
In fact, Shepard actually secured the loan before changing his commitment to UH…ironically, two of the board members who approved of the load were Texas exes…LOL…
Shepard and his trans Am only lasted a couple of years before he transferred to OU…he once told me that he was going to write a book and that those folks in Austin were not going to like it…
Still waiting for that book to come out…
UT will more than likely never go on probation in football or hoops due to that political clout and all the money that oozes out of their Austin campus.
A former UH athlete, who was coaching down in West Oso at the time of the recruitment of star hoopster Jerry Davis once told me, “There is absolutely nobody that can out bid Texas if it wants a player. Nobody…that is just the way it is and probably always will be…”
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YEAH I DO REMEMBER ABOUT SHEPHARD. HE HAD ALREADY TOLD COACH
BY HE WAS COMING TO UH BUT WANTED TO TAKE SOME RECRUITING VISITS.
HE GOES TO AUSTIN (THEY WANTED HIM BAD) THE LAST NIGHT THERE 3
UT FOLKS TAKE DS TO AN OFFICE AND GRILL HIM ABOUT UT AND ALL THAT
HE COULD DO AT UT. THEY KEEP PUSHING HIM AND ASKING ARE YOU WITH
US. PREASURE. FINAL HE SAYS MAYBE. AND LEAVES THE ROOM . THE NEXT
MORNING THE AUSTIN RAG HAS HEAD LINES D.S. COMMITS TO UT. HE SEES
THAT AND CALLS CBY AND SAYS I DID NOT SUCH THING AND COMMETED TO
UH. SIGHNING DAY THEY ARE REALLY PISSED. NO DS. THEY HAD 3 MEMBERS
ON THE NCAA VIOLATIONS COMMITE. NCAA SHOWS UP WITH CLEAN SHEET
OF PAPER TO INVESTIGATE. NO INFRACTIONS LISTED. CBY TELLS THEM OF
MINOR PROBLEM WHEN PLANE SENT TO ODDESSA DS GIRLFRIEND GETS
ON THE PLANE. PILOT DOES NOT KNOW. WE TURNED OURSELFS IN FOR
THIS VERY MINOR PROBLEM. WE GET PROBATION AND DS CAN NEVER PLAY
IN A BOWL AND IS RECOMINDED TO TRANSFER. OK GETS THIS # 1 recruit in
texas. OH YEAH I KNOW OF MANY SUCH DIRT BAG UT HEAVY HANDED SUCH
STORIES. HOW ABOUT ANITTA MORTINY???
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I wish you would write a book about those crooked bastards.
On the other hand, they might try to take you out.
No need. It is readable once you click on it.
And, here is a copy of a post I made a couple of years ago on the thread entitled, “Classic Stories and UH History.” [Looks like I got the date wrong - the month was November, not January - sorry 'bout that!]
As the old saying goes, "Those who refuse to learn from history - are doomed to repeat it!"
[Note: This is an exact transcript of an article written by John Wilson of the Chronicle staff, and published by The Houston Chronicle on January 8, 1981, on Page 2, Section 3.]
UH has fared poorly in getting production from top blue chips.
In the normal course of events Darrell Shepard would have been starting at quarterback for the University of Houston against Texas Saturday night. Lionel Wilson would have been a redshirt sophomore. That is the Bill Yeoman program. Redshirt as a sophomore (the freshman year counts as one of your four years of eligibility regardless of whether you play or not) and finish up in your fifth year.
But sophomore Wilson is starting for Houston out of necessity. Injuries left Yeoman no alternative. And Shepard played Saturday for Oklahoma instead of Houston.
Mainly, Yeoman builds his program on high school players who are not the most highly recruited in the state. They are good athletes with much potential but they are not the ones who have 25 and 50 and 100 schools seeking their services. Only a few from the blue chip lists compiled by high school experts wind up at Houston.
But Shepard was an exception. My judgment and memory is that in UH’s 36-year football history, the school successfully recruited only four widely heralded and unanimously acclaimed blue chip backs. They were Claude King, who came out of Mississippi in the mid-1950’s; Warren McVea, who in the early 1960’s at San Antonio was the most exciting high school player in Texas history; Jeff Bergeron of Port Neches-Groves, the outstanding running back in the state in 1972, and Shepard, a blue chip quarterback at Odessa in 1976.
King had a notable career at UH although he never fulfilled the dreams of Kingdom come. McVea went on to the pros and although there were some people who thought he did not achieve in college what his high school career had promised, there are many factors to be evaluated. McVea was a key player on the teams that at long last broke Houston out of its bondage as a second tier team into one that commanded respect on the national level. Yeoman has said that if McVea was a failure he would like to have a lot of such failures every year. Bergeron left school in his freshman year and transferred to Stephen F. Austin. The reasons for his actions have been speculated about ever since, possibly even by himself. Shepard transferred to Oklahoma following one of the most unusual penalties in NCAA history.
In the spring of 1976, Shepard told Texas coach Fred Akers he was going to sign with the Longhorns. On the opening day for high school signings, Akers showed up at Shepard’s house in Odessa with pen in hand. Shepard told Akers he had changed his mind and was signing with Houston.
It turned out to be a costly acquisition for Houston. The University of Texas was not going to take this sitting down. And make no mistake about it, Texas has the power to exert its influence in the NCAA, in the conference, in Houston, in Dallas, or whereever [spic].
In Shepard’s sophomore year at Houston, the Dallas Times-Herald published a story that a University of Houston assistant coach had told Shepard’s mother about a certain bank where she may try to get a loan to buy Darrell a car. She had been turned down by the banks in Odessa (after Darrell had signed with Houston). That a member of the university had pointed her to the right bank was a violation of NCAA rules, the Dallas paper pointed out.
The NCAA investigated and Yeoman admitted UH’s action, just as he had to the Dallas reporter.
J. Niels Thompson of the University of Texas was the president of the NCAA that year. Law professor Dr. Charles Allen Wright of the University of Texas was one of the five members of the NCAA infractions committee. The NCAA does not divulge what goes on behind closed doors, but a story widely circulated has it that Wright made the presentation and cast the deciding vote on a 3-2 decision for the penalty against Houston. The penalty was that Houston could not play in a bowl game that season and could not be on television the next year. As for Shepard, it was ruled he could never participate in a bowl game for Houston. Now, get that. He wasn’t made ineligible for any time and there was no penalty against him at all unless he remained at Houston. And the unique part of the penalty was that he would be immediately eligible if he transferred to another school and would be able to play in a bowl game at any school to which he transferred.
Shepard transferred to Oklahoma. Yeoman said he couldn’t blame him and made no attempt to talk him out of it. Texas had won its victory. As the little boy explained the moral of his story to the teacher: “It doesn’t pay to mess with Roy Rogers.”
About the same time, Texas had an almost identical situation, in which a Fort Worth high school player had a car financed by a Texas alumnus. No penalty was assessed to Texas, the player was sent away and the alumnus was told to sever relations with athletes but the story was essentially covered up. Then there came the reports (not from the sports pages but from the news pages) that Texas athletes had been paid to perform state jobs and had not even shown up for work. The university was allowed to investigate that itself, neither the Southwest Conference nor the NCAA choosing to get into it. You will be surprised to learn that the Texas investigation found that there had been no wrong-doing so far as athletics were concerned.
A non-NCAA related investigation of a banker in West Texas last year revealed that he had been paying excessive amounts for football tickets sold him by a Longhorn player. This is a clear violation of NCAA rules. So far as I know, there was little conference or NCAA interest in the incident.
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