1/9/2024 0 Comments Big 12 conferenceBut after the SWC broke up, the Cougars were forced to toil in the relative anonymity of Conference USA for seventeen seasons, before joining the newly formed AAC in 2013. The Cougars made eight trips to the NCAA Tournament and five to the NIT. In basketball, UH won three SWC championships and five SWC Tournaments. UH had won four SWC football titles and went to seven bowl games during its twenty years in the conference. The roll call of greatest Cougars athletes-Hakeem Olajuwon, Carl Lewis, Wilson Whitley-is second to none. The University of Houston should have been included. TCU was admitted to the conference in 2011, after A&M bolted for the SEC. When the Southwest Conference disbanded that year, only four schools-Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, and Texas Tech-joined the Big Eight to form the Big 12. Back then, Hofheinz Pavilion was one of the most revered college basketball venues in the country. UH was not passed over for Big 12 membership when the conference opened play in 1996 because of any lack of facilities. “There isn’t any question that the Cougars raise the bar in every sport and in every way,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. UH’s hiring of Sampson to coach men’s basketball paid off in a trip to the Final Four last spring, and football coach Dana Holgorsen is being paid $4 million to keep the Cougars on the national radar. UH poured money into sports too, building new venues for football and basketball, along with new practice facilities for both programs. Under Khator, UH has been remade in all sorts of ways, with a flurry of campus construction and enough research spending to achieve tier one status as a world-class research institution and place of learning. We feel like all of that journey has been very worth it.” I’m proud to say all these things are coming together. “As we started to look at our academic things, there were a lot of things that we needed to raise. “We have been totally focused on ourselves, the things we can do, the things we should do to deserve a more competitive platform for our student athletes,” Khator said. That the Big 12 would not be rushing to add a vibrant campus of 47,000 in the nation’s fourth-largest city until now is galling, infuriating, and indicative of the conference’s lack of vision. “It’s just special to be part of the Big 12,” Fertitta added. “It’s got to be exciting for them as Houstonians that they get to watch their school come to the city of Houston and be part of it. “This is a big area and a big city with so many alumni from all of these schools,” he said. “This is great for the city of Houston, which everybody knows how much I love,” said Fertitta, who owns the Houston Rockets and who stressed the benefits to the city of attracting fans from Baylor, TCU, Iowa State, and other Big 12 members. While this gift may come from the department of unintended consequences, seeing the Cougars compete in the Big 12 will mean all kinds of good for UH supporters. They’re usually the last consideration in realignment discussions.
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