I always appreciate comments from readers and I got one last week that I truly treasure. A friend wrote in response to the piece about new additions to the Big 12 Conference. He pointed out that I had overlooked a mention of Houston in concentrating on the addition of Cincinnati, Brigham Young and Central Florida to the conference.

“You failed to mention Houston, and their basketball history and their current coach Kelvin Sampson, the former long time OU coach. And they have a decent history of good football teams. I remember a memorable Cotton Bowl with them and Notre Dame.”

My friend hit the nail on its head. There should have been some mention of Houston in the piece, even if it was a minimal comment. Personally, I thought Houston would have been a good addition back when Texas Christian and West Virginia were added. At that time I thought that there should have been an effort to name four teams to give the conference 12 members to correspond to its name. I would have been happy had Houston been one of the new schools to be added.

But when this new addition came along, my thoughts seemed to go directly to BYU, UCF and Cincinnati, questioning their ability to contribute to the other schools in the conference.

In my piece I concentrated on Cincinnati’s basketball history, primarily because my aged rememberer tends to think in terms of years way past. But the Bearcats have an outstanding football team this year and have been ranked in the Top 10 on occasion in recent years. Cincinnati won’t embarrass itself in either football or basketball, a fact my friend pointed out.

“The only weak links I see in these additions are UCF and BYU basketball. They will struggle to compete in the Big 12. But UCF is a huge college like 70,000 students and BYU brings in a lot of money,” he said.

Since last week I have done a lot of reading on what others think about the additions to the Big 12 and the comments are mostly positive, similar to the thoughts of my friend. I do appreciate his input.

It is correct that Houston has a very rich sports heritage. Instead of dating back to the 19th Century like many of the other Big 12 schools, Houston has a relatively recent history. The year 1946 was the earliest that Houston fielded either a football or basketball team, making its history a little bit newer than my personal story.

From what I read, the first Houston football team came in response to a couple of students who in 1945 took it upon themselves in the name of UH to challenge Rice Institute, an established member of the vaunted Southwest Conference, to a game. The university supported their efforts, hired a coach, joined the Lone Star Conference and invited students to try out for a team. The response was large, 130 young men reported to the tryouts--only 10 of whom had played any college football. A game (called an exhibition) with Rice was scheduled in 1946 and Rice demolished the young Houston outfit. But 11,000 fans turned out to watch. Houston football was born.

Houston, along with Texas Tech, applied for membership in the Southwest Conference in 1948 but were turned down. However the Cougars joined the Gulf Coast Conference in 1948 and for the first time was a member of what is now called NCAA Division I. In 1951, Houston became a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, joining Tulsa and Oklahoma A&M in that conference. My first memories of Houston had them competing in the Valley. The Cougars were actually ranked for the first time in 1952

I remember that in 1955 Bill Meek, coach at Kansas State, was hired away from Manhattan, to coach at Houston. Meek had given K-State some credibility and actually led the Wild cats to a winning season, back in years when football victories there were a rarity. Meek served only two years in Houston before going to Southern Methodist in Dallas. Mississippi supported Houston in its bid to become a member of the SEC in the 1950s, but that did not materialize.

Bill Yeoman was hired as Houston’s football coach in 1962 and he brought Houston to national prominence. The Cougars were consistently good under Yeoman’s tutelage and were often ranked in the Top 10 and participated in many bowls. Yeoman invented the Veer offense and his teams were known for their offensive prowess. During his tenure Houston became part of the Southwestern Conference. Other notable coaches at Houston since include Jack Pardee and most recently Tom Herman. Dana Holgerson, a former assistant at OSU and head coach at West Virginia, is now the head coach.

I have more personal memories of the basketball program, dating back to 1965 when I was a senior at K-State and the NCAA Midwest Regional was played in Ahearn Fieldhouse on the KSU campus.

I covered the event for the campus newspaper and became somewhat familiar with the four teams involved--Houston, which was classified as an independent that year, SMU from the Southwest Conference, Oklahoma State from the Big 8 and Wichita State from the Missouri Valley.

The coaches were Henry Iba from OSU, Gary Thompson from Wichita State, Doc Hayes from SMU and Guy Lewis from Houston. I had occasion to talk personally to each of the coaches. I really don’t remember much about interviewing Hayes or Thompson. Hayes was a grizzled veteran and Thompson was a youngster in his first year as head coach. But I do remember talking to Iba and Lewis. What I remember most about Iba was his gravelly voice and in spite of his storied career a willingness to talk to a kid reporter. Lewis was equally gracious and he basically predicted that his team probably wouldn’t win, but it was there to do what it could do.

Houston had got to Manhattan by defeating Notre Dame in a 99-98 shootout. Lewis said he expected the other three teams in the Regional to be able to play better defense than Notre Dame did. He was right. Houston’s first opponent was Iba’s OSU team and the Cowboys won 75-60. Wichita, which was upset in the Midwest Regional finals by Kansas State in 1964, defeated both SMU and OSU to advance to the Final Four, being played that year in Portland. Just an aside, UCLA won its second in a long list of NCAA titles that year defeating Michigan in the finals. Princeton, led by Bill Bradley, was the other team in Portland.

Lewis had a long history at Houston, including being a member of the first Cougar basketball team in 1947. He became head coach at Houston in 1956. He was known for holding onto a bright red and white polka dot towel during games. I remember mentioning his towel in my game story. When the dunk shot was banned in 1967, he was one who called for its reinstatement. He called it a “high percentage shot” which fans had grown to love. His support along with the support of other prominent coaches led the NCAA to reinstate the dunk in 1977. His teams made liberal use of the dunk and one group became known as Phi Slama Jamma. The Phi Slama Jamma teams went to three consecutive Final Fours 1982, 1983 and 1984.

Lewis was known as someone who actively recruited African-American athletes and he had some of the nation’s best including Elvin Hayes, Don Chaney and Clyde Drexler. I remember a game between Houston and UCLA, both were unbeaten at the time and it was played in the Astrodome. That was during the Elvin Hayes-Drexler era and many pundits were picking Houston to beat UCLA. They did, one of two losses UCLA suffered during Lew Alcindor’s (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) tenure. It was the first ever nationally televised regular season basketball game and a crowd of 55,000 were on hand at the Astrodome. Alcindor didn’t play well and had only 15 points, but in his defense, he had suffered an eye injury in the game before. The two teams met again in the NCAA semifinals and UCLA won easily. This time it was Hayes who didn’t play well and the reason was a diamond and one defense devised by Coach John Wooden’s staff. Both games were known as “The Game of the Century” and “The Game of the Century 2”.

Under Lewis, Houston had 27 consecutive winning seasons and six trips to the Final Four. He retired in 1986 after 30 years and 592 wins.

My friend is absolutely correct in pointing out that Houston currently has a tie to this area in its current basketball coach Kelvin Sampson. Sampson has had his struggles with recruiting violations over the years, but the man can coach. When he was at OU, he came on a couple of times to Tonkawa to watch an NOC game. On one such occasion I had a chance to exchange pleasantries with him. Because of that, I have always rooted for his teams since.

I messed up by not mentioning Houston last week. There is no doubt in my mind that the Cougars will be a good addition to the Big 12.