It's already been a good couple of days for me as a UH alum. My Coogs are 10-1 in basketball after beating down UK 83-66 Tuesday night in front of a sellout crowd at Hofheinz Pavilion. The best news from last night besides me getting to tease Dawn about my boys beating the Mildcats was they finally retired Michael Young's number at that game. We'll be playing TCU in the upcoming Texas Bowl at Reliant Stadium.
Speaking of football, I'll be paying even closer attention to my alma mater's football fortunes this fall. I was pleased to learn that Kevin Sumlin, who was an assistant coach at the University of Oklahoma, will become the 11th head coach in University of Houston football history and its first Afrcan-American one. He'll be taking over for Art Briles, who took the Baylor job.
One of the things I've always liked about my alma mater is that they were the first major college in Texas to recruit African-American players. Bill Yeoman did it on the football side with Warren McVea in July 1964, and Guy Lewis on the basketball side with Elvin Hayes and Don Chaney.
Bill and Guy were also innovators. Yeoman created the veer offense which terrorized college football in the late 60 through the 70's. Guy Lewis not only persuaded mighty UCLA to play the 'Game of the Century' at the Dome in 1969 (and we beat them), he was instrumental in getting the 1971 Final Four played at the dome.was inst. You can thank Guy Lewis not only for Final Fours being played in domed stadiums, but televised college basketball games as well.
It's about time my alma mater finally made that groundbreaking head coach move with the football program and it's past time that other NCAA institutions start doing the same thing. I hope Kevin has a long and successful stay on Cullen Blvd.
Eat 'em up!
