MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When Oliver Luck was living in Houston and working for the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority he would frequently run into University of Houston graduates.
He learned quickly from them the depressing tale of Houston Cougar football.
At one time, U of H was challenging Texas and Texas A&M for football supremacy in the Lone Star State. During an 11-year period from 1968-79, the Cougars were nationally ranked nine times, including three seasons in the top 10 during a four-year stretch from 1976-79.
Houston was able to parlay that great success into membership in the Southwest Conference in 1976, and for 17 years Houston was sitting at college football’s big table - that is until the Southwest Conference imploded in 1994.
When the dust had settled, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor joined forces with the Big 8 schools to form the Big 12 Conference. And the one prominent Southwest Conference school left standing on the outside looking in was Houston.
“I’m living in Houston; great city - booming,” Luck recalled. “Houston’s football program used to play in the Astrodome with 50,000; they were playing in Cotton Bowls; they had a Heisman Trophy winner in Andre Ware. They were sending lots of guys to the NFL and they don’t make the cut when the old Southwest Conference falls apart.”
Houston’s football program – and to some degree the school’s academic reputation – had suffered a critical blow in the world of public opinion.
“The University of Houston is a tremendous academic institution, but the people of Texas referred to it as ‘Cougar High’ because they were not playing Texas and Texas A&M any more in football,” Luck explained. “An accounting degree from Houston was considered to be less valuable than one from Texas just because of football, and I thought that was awful. People would moan and groan and complain because perception is sometimes reality.”
The University of Houston was the first thing that popped into Luck’s mind when he heard, in late September of 2011, that Pitt and Syracuse were leaving the Big East to join the ACC. A Big East without Pitt and Syracuse is no longer a Big East.
At the time, Luck had been West Virginia’s athletic director for about a year and he knew when he took the job in the summer of 2010 that realignment was probably going to hit his alma mater “right in the face.”
Those were the exact words Luck used when he began prepping West Virginia University president Jim Clements for what lay ahead for WVU athletics.
http://www.wvusports.com/page.cfm?story=25902&cat=exclusives
He learned quickly from them the depressing tale of Houston Cougar football.
At one time, U of H was challenging Texas and Texas A&M for football supremacy in the Lone Star State. During an 11-year period from 1968-79, the Cougars were nationally ranked nine times, including three seasons in the top 10 during a four-year stretch from 1976-79.
Houston was able to parlay that great success into membership in the Southwest Conference in 1976, and for 17 years Houston was sitting at college football’s big table - that is until the Southwest Conference imploded in 1994.
When the dust had settled, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor joined forces with the Big 8 schools to form the Big 12 Conference. And the one prominent Southwest Conference school left standing on the outside looking in was Houston.
“I’m living in Houston; great city - booming,” Luck recalled. “Houston’s football program used to play in the Astrodome with 50,000; they were playing in Cotton Bowls; they had a Heisman Trophy winner in Andre Ware. They were sending lots of guys to the NFL and they don’t make the cut when the old Southwest Conference falls apart.”
Houston’s football program – and to some degree the school’s academic reputation – had suffered a critical blow in the world of public opinion.
“The University of Houston is a tremendous academic institution, but the people of Texas referred to it as ‘Cougar High’ because they were not playing Texas and Texas A&M any more in football,” Luck explained. “An accounting degree from Houston was considered to be less valuable than one from Texas just because of football, and I thought that was awful. People would moan and groan and complain because perception is sometimes reality.”
The University of Houston was the first thing that popped into Luck’s mind when he heard, in late September of 2011, that Pitt and Syracuse were leaving the Big East to join the ACC. A Big East without Pitt and Syracuse is no longer a Big East.
At the time, Luck had been West Virginia’s athletic director for about a year and he knew when he took the job in the summer of 2010 that realignment was probably going to hit his alma mater “right in the face.”
Those were the exact words Luck used when he began prepping West Virginia University president Jim Clements for what lay ahead for WVU athletics.
http://www.wvusports.com/page.cfm?story=25902&cat=exclusives
