HOUSTON (AP) -The Houston Cougars strutted into the Orange Bowl on Sept. 12, 1991, looking to topple No. 2 Miami.
The 10th-ranked Cougars were coming off a 10-1 season followed by months of media saturation featuring outspoken coach John Jenkins and the revolutionary run-and-shoot offense. Expectations only grew after its 73-3 season-opening win over Louisiana Tech in which David Klingler threw for six touchdowns – in the second quarter alone – and finished the game with nine.
By the end of that sticky Thursday night in south Florida, the Hurricanes had a 40-10 victory and would later with the national championship. For the Cougars, it was the beginning of a free fall from which it took 18 years to recover.
On Saturday, No. 17 Houston will host Texas Tech and put its first ranking since that awful night on the line in front of a sold-out crowd and a national television audience. The Cougars busted into the AP poll by knocking off then-No. 5 Oklahoma State 45-35 almost two weeks ago.
woeful 0-11 in 2001.
“I think when you look at it, football goes in cycles and there’s always upticks and there’s downticks and that’s just how it goes,” Jenkins told The Associated Press this week.
Jenkins was hired as offensive coordinator under coach Jack Pardee after the 1986 season in which Houston finished 1-10. The run-and-shoot took a while to catch on and Houston went 4-6-1 in 1987. They had figured it out by 1988 and finished 9-3 and ranked 18th. Houston followed up with another nine-win season and was No. 14.
Andre Ware threw for 4,699 yards and 46 touchdowns to win the Heisman Trophy that year despite the Cougars being banned from appearing on television because of NCAA violations from the previous regime.
Ware liked the challenge of helping to rebuild a team.
“It was more attractive at that point because you want to be a part of something when it turns around,” he said. “And knowing the history of the school and that they’d been winners before, you wanted to be a part of it.”
Jenkins believes his then-unconventional offense was key in bringing national attention to the school.
I believed in and that’s what made it work.”
It worked so well that some grumbled Jenkins and his Cougars would unnecessarily run up the score against weaker opponents. In 1989, Houston beat a just-back-from-the-NCAA-death-penalty SMU team 95-21.
Twenty years later, Jenkins insists he wouldn’t change a thing.
“I never had one coach approach me face to face and tell me after a game, ‘Hey man, I wished you would have pulled off or you ran up the score on me,”’ he said. “Yet I would hear this from media members. I guess if a coach had ever told me that face to face I would have said, ‘Hey, bring a better team next time.’ It’s as simple as that.”
So it was with particular delight to many when Miami handily defeated the Cougars in 1991. Jenkins, who took over for Pardee when he left to coach the Houston Oilers in 1990, said there’s no secret to what happened that night. Houston simply lost to a great team.
“I find it very amusing over the years that when a team gets beat, quite often the coach afterward will go on record as saying, ‘Hey, we didn’t make plays. We didn’t play well. We didn’t do this. We didn’t do that,”’ he said. “You know what? The other side has a lot to do with that in each game. Miami won the national championship that year. They certainly had a lot to do with it that night.”
to Klingler. The Cougars had another 4-7 season in 1992 and Jenkins was soon forced to resign after allegations of NCAA violations surfaced.
Houston was eventually put on probation for the infractions.
The Cougars took another hit when the Southwest Conference disbanded in 1995 and they weren’t asked to join either the Big 12 or the Southeastern Conference. Houston won the Conference USA title in 1996 and in 2006 but those seasons lacked a signature win.
Ware, who remains in Houston and works as a radio and television analyst, said it was difficult to watch the program crumble. He said he thinks the team missed Pardee’s discipline.
“It’s been one of those things where you watch it grow to that level on we’re on the national stage and to go the direction it went, yeah, I get a little upset about it,” he said. “But what’s happening now is nice to see and it puts a good taste in your mouth to see the job (Houston coach) Kevin Sumlin’s done.”
Sumlin took over from Art Briles, who led Houston to three winning seasons in five years before leaving for Baylor after the 2007 season.
The Cougars are likely in for Saturday night shootout when they host the Red Raiders. Tech quarterback Taylor Potts ranks first in NCAA with more than 430 yards passing a game and Houston’s Case Keenum is fifth with just more than 362 yards.
is game is any more important.
“We have a bunch of goals we haven’t gotten to,” said Sumlin, who went 7-5 in his first year with the Cougars. “For our fans, for our city and for our alumni, this is huge deal. We couldn’t be more excited about the sellout, the national recognition and everything else that makes us proud.”
“For us, we can’t be jumping up and down and going nuts and then when something bad happens, we can’t cry,” he said. “We have a long season to go.”
As for Jenkins, he won’t be able to watch this one, though he attended the Oklahoma State game. He will be more than 200 miles away in Marshall, Texas, to see his son Raefe and Division III East Texas Baptist University take on Texas Lutheran.
But the old coach’s mind will be on the Cougars and his influence will certainly be noted as these two former Southwest Conference foes “throw it all over the lot,” the way Houston did so well almost two decades ago.
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