Cougars’ No. 1 goal gets early launch with OU
After coming out of nowhere last season, the University of Houston’s path to another New Year’s Six bowl game or bigger is clearly defined.
“Bottom line: win,” coach Tom Herman said Tuesday at the Advocare Texas Kickoff luncheon to promote the Cougars’ 11 a.m. Sept. 3 opener against Oklahoma at NRG Stadium — one of the marquee matchups of the opening weekend of the 2016 college football season.
Quite possibly the biggest season opener in UH history, the Advocare Texas Kickoff could serve as a launching pad for a second consecutive appearance in a coveted New Year’s Six game. A victory over the Sooners, a likely top-five preseason team, would put the Cougars in the early discussion to become the first school from a non-power conference to play in the four-team College Football Playoff.
In Herman’s first season, UH went from unranked at the start of the season to 10-0 and finally gaining momentum late in the season
as the Group of Five’s representative to play in a New Year’s Six bowl. The Cougars upset Florida State in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl to cap a 13-1 season.
Houston is considered the Group of Five’s best shot again this season and likely will begin in good position on the fringe of a top-10 preseason ranking. The Cougars will be favored to win a second consecutive American Athletic Conference title and have another chance to impress with a November non-conference home game against Louisville.
“Now you don’t have to go kind of trump it and sell your program and what you are doing and get all ticked off every week because you don’t know why you’re ranked where you are ranked,” Herman said. “You just worry about winning.”
The path is clear
Herman said the AAC, which had four ranked teams last season, has positioned itself as the top Group of Five conference.
“The path to a New Year’s Six bowl game is about as straightforward in the American Athletic Conference as any conference in the country,” Herman said. “You win (the conference) and, barring some miracle season from some other team, you’re going to go to a New Year’s Six bowl game.
“We’re talking about the Fiesta Bowl and the Rose Bowl potentially in years to come. We’re talking about the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, the Peach Bowl and Sugar Bowl. You’re talking about the most historic bowl games in the history of college football — and all you have to do is win your conference.”
With the game still more than three months away, Herman said he knows little about the Sooners, other than “they’re going to be really good and I know they are well-coached.
“We’re not preparing for Oklahoma. We’re preparing for the season. We’ll worry about Oklahoma and the season-long ramifications of that game in August and September.”
An annual affair?
Game organizers could not have predicted such a marquee matchup when the game was announced in 2014. Jamey Rootes, president of Lone Star Sports & Entertainment, which is putting on the game, said 60,000 tickets already have been sold.
“Any time you can create a matchup years in advance that when it does come to fruition you have two top10, top-12 teams colliding the first week of the season, I’d say they are right,” Herman said. “They did hit the jackpot when they scheduled it.”
Tuesday’s luncheon also featured former UH quarterback and 1989 Heisman Trophy winner Andre Ware and former OU running back Joe Washington Jr., a Port Arthur native and member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Sooners coach Bob Stoops did not attend Tuesday’s luncheon.
Washington said he would like to see the two programs play more often. This will be only the third meeting between the schools and first since 2004.
“I might entertain the thought as long as we can play every year at NRG Stadium in our home city,” Herman said.