Making strides
Jerome Solomon takes a step back in time to reveal how far UH has come.
Remember all those times the winds of conference realignment blew across the country and the University of Houston was left out in the cold?
The virtual blizzard of ’94 was the worst.
That was the year the Southwest Conference folded, thanks to the departures of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor to the newly formed Big 12 Conference.
UH has been out in the cold ever since. Brrrr!
So, understandably, news this past week that the Big 12 is thinking about opening its doors and welcoming new members was met with excitement at UH. Things are heating up. More surprising than the Big 12 announcement, was the unanticipated development of powerful government officials and burnt orange big dogs, who voiced (well, electronically voiced via social media) support for a UH candidacy. Whodathunkit? Gov. Greg Abbott posted on Twitter that “Big 12 expansion is a non-starter unless it includes (the) University of Houston.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also jumped on the UH bandwagon: “I join with (Abbott) any Big 12 expansion must include @UHouston or NO DEAL!”
The UT system chancellor and school president each issued statements in support of UH joining the Big 12.
The Big 12 might collapse in a few years, but for now it would be a great landing spot for a school like UH.
This was such a positive turn that UH officials weren’t even upset they didn’t get Ted Cruz’s endorsement.
Perhaps UH megabooster Tilman Fertitta’s quarter of a million-dollar donation to Abbott’s last gubernatorial campaign is paying off.
“Joy and happiness?” What a sharp contrast to events in the spring of ’94.
Then-Gov. Ann Richards said confer- ence realignment was none of her business.
“The legislative body in Austin should not get involved in what the SWC schools do about the realignment of their schools,” she said.
That’s easier to say when your alma mater (Baylor) received an invite. Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, who earned degrees from Baylor and Texas Tech, wasn’t inclined to put up much of a fight.
“I really am not happy at this circumstance,” said Richards, who grew up just outside Waco. “I think this is strictly driven by money and revenue, not by politics.”
On lower end of one-to-10 scale
Yeah, right. Richards wasn’t that naive. “This is the continuation of the University of Houston being considered a stepchild,’’ Mayor Bob Lanier said then.
Texas Tech, which had been contributing next to nothing — and some years actually nothing — to the SWC television revenue, wormed its way into the Big 12 the old-fashioned way. Politics.
But as much as Cougars want to rewrite history, UH not being invited to join the Big 12 in 1994 was upsetting, but not a huge slight. UH didn’t deserve to be in a league with the big boys.
It does now.
Without question UH would have had the opportunity to thrive with the increased funds and stability the Big 12 would have provided, but the athletic department had been in such a bad place that hardly anyone was surprised the school wasn’t invited.
Few besides then-school president James Pickering, that is, who said he was “shocked,” and “stunned and angered” UH didn’t receive an invite to the Big 12 party.
Athletic director Bill Carr was far more realistic.
Carr told the Chronicle back then that on a scale of one to 10, UH athletics were operating at a three.
A harsh assessment that no current official would use about a school, but Carr was patting himself on the back.
He thought UH had been operating at a two when he took the job.
The year before the SWC breakdown, UH hired Carr, football coach Kim Helton and basketball coach Alvin Brooks, and used “A New Beginning” as its operating slogan.
Helton’s football squad won one game. Brooks’ basketball team posted the school’s worst record of 8-19.
UH sold 6,300 football season tickets the season before the SWC’s demise. Average attendance at the Astrodome for football was barely 17,000, the worst it had been in 30 years, and basketball at Hofheinz Pavilion drew a paltry 2,900 per game, despite an alleged 2,100 season ticket holders.
With morale and support at an all-time low, the Faculty Senate adopted a resolution calling for the abolition of intercollegiate athletics.
Support for sports soars
UH has been trying to climb the ladder to respectability since.
UH’s alumni base has grown tremendously in the last 20 years. The commuter school label is gone.
Season-ticket sales for this year’s games at TDECU Stadium are at 21,000 and rising.
School president Renu Khator has pushed for UH to improve its academic and athletic standing. Vice president of intercollegiate athletics Hunter Yurachek has taken up where Mack Rhoades left off, dead set on moving UH into a Power Five conference.
A May 1, 1994, headline in the Chronicle declared: “The UH Future is Now.” That future wasn’t good. This one could be pretty sweet.