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Houston Cougars Have Been Screwed More Than Any NCAA School In Recent Memory
Here you have a university in one of the biggest cities of our country. They shown that they can be a national power in football, basketball, and baseball at one time or another. Houston was dominant at some points when it came to football and basketball in the old Southwest Conference days. Then the conference imploded.
Houston was screwed when they were not given an invitation to the Big 8, but Texas Tech and Baylor were admitted thanks to some help from local politicians including the governor Ann Richards, a former Baylor alum. Waco and Lubbock were better markets than the city of Houston? Please!
Houston had to settle for Conference USA. I don't care what anyone says. No matter how big the university or city, if you don't have a huge TV market to sell to, it's nearly going to be impossible to recruit the troops you need for a winning program. Of course, they spun their wheels for years in football and basketball accomplishing nearly nothing.
Now after all of this, they have really done a wonderful job with their football and baseball programs, but especially football. They have hired 3 great coaches in the last 13 years in Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin, and Tom Herman, all who have eventually run off to greener pastures. They rank 20th in most wins by a school in Division 1A for the last 10 years. They have improved their facilities greatly to lure potential recruits, and maybe entice a major conference to come calling, but nonetheless, they keep coming up with their hands empty.
It wasn't a surprise that the Big 12 would screw them again. The University of Texas wanted nothing of them in the conference. it would have fueled even more competition for recruiting if the Cougars were elevated to their level. A lot of kids would have considered staying close to home if they could be guaranteed to be on highly viewed nationally televised games nearly every week. The Big 12 eventually decided to stay at 10 teams mainly because under their TV contract, Fox and ESPN would have had to pay any expansion members to the conference the same amount they were paying the current members. That would have been an additional $20-$30 million per school. With networks losing subscribers lately, it wouldn't have made financial sense. So, Houston got screwed once again.
Houston will probably not be considered for expansion any time soon. These TV contracts for conferences run until around 2023 to 2025, so there won't be a lot of change. Maybe they'll get a chance then because I think the dysfunctional Big 12 conference will be history, and we'll have 4 16-team power conferences then. At that point, I would bet that Houston might have a shot at the Pac-16 because they might be wanting to extend their TV base under a new TV contract. Until then, the Cougars will just have to just continue persevering. It's sad because, if given the chance, they could actually have the potential of being among the Goliaths of the NCAA once again.
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Originally Posted by funnyb25
