Houston and Florida State will play in the 2015 Peach Bowl, a New Year’s Six game. The pairing feels odd in many ways, chiefly because Houston hasn’t played a bowl of this stature in 30 years. The fact that the Cougars reside in a lower-tier conference also makes the event feel smaller than it should.
Yet, while this is one of the two undercards in the New Year’s Six (the other one being the Sugar Bowl between Ole Miss and Oklahoma State), it’s not as much of a David-versus-Goliath pairing as younger college football fans might think.
Let’s start with a prelude before getting into the heart of our story.
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This is the fascinating historical backdrop to Cougars-Seminoles: While Florida State has indeed cemented itself as a top-tier college football powerhouse, the original ascent of Florida State was accompanied by Houston’s rise to the spotlight. Florida State sustained its surge, whereas Houston ran out of steam, but these two programs became national names in college football at the same point in history. Some different twists and turns marked each school’s journey, but they rose together in surprisingly symmetrical fashion.
One fundamental difference between Houston and Florida State — ironically inverted this season — is that when Houston hit the big time in college football, it did so by shedding independent status and moving to (what was then) a power league, the Southwest Conference. Whereas the 2015 Cougars reached a top-tier bowl by excelling in a smaller conference (The American), the 1976 Cougars used the SWC and its stature to make a first impression on college football fans.
Florida State remained independent for many years before joining the ACC in 1992. By that time, the Noles had not only become a superpower; they had reaffirmed that identity beyond all doubt. With Houston, however, a jump to a premier conference is what originally gave the Cougars a national platform. This is where the stories of these schools take shape.
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The big-picture similarities between Houston and Florida State flow from the 1976 season. This was Bobby Bowden’s first campaign in Tallahassee. Houston coach Bill Yeoman had guided Houston for 14 seasons before then, but in a sense, the veteran coach was starting over in his own right, because Houston made the jump to the Southwest Conference. The Cougars were stepping into a world in which Earl Campbell carried the ball for Texas. Lou Holtz was one year removed from leading Arkansas into the top five and thumping No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. Baylor was actually good back then, reaching the Cotton Bowl in both the 1974 and 1980 seasons. The SWC was not at its best, but this was hardly an easy environment in which to compete as a newbie.
Yeoman did have one advantage, though: Darrell Royal of Texas, the iconic coach who led the Longhorns to multiple national championships, was winding down his career. Royal spent 20 seasons guiding Texas to the top of the college football world, and 1976 marked his swan song. Royal had made the decision to use the wishbone in the late 1960s, and he taught Bear Bryant how to implement that offense, a move which would enable the Tide and their coach to rule college football in the 1970s. Royal was the most formidable tactical foe for Yeoman in the SWC of the time. When he retired, Yeoman — the creator of the Veer offense — became the unquestioned top tactician in the league.
Not coincidentally, Houston promptly succeeded in its new conference home.
In 1976, the Cougars produced a 9-2 regular season and a 7-1 league record, good enough to win the Southwest Conference title in their first season as a member. The Cougars lost at home to Arkansas midway through the season and had to play three straight road games to close the SWC schedule. However, the Cougars crushed Texas in Austin and beat then-No. 5 Texas Tech in Lubbock. They put the finishing touches on their SWC crown by beating their inner city rivals from Rice University.
The idea of a long climb to the top in the Southwest Conference never materialized… because the climb was a short one. Houston scaled the mountain on its first try. When the Cougars played in the 1977 Cotton Bowl against Maryland, it was their first taste of the venerable New Year’s Day bowl game. They could have been overwhelmed by the occasion, but they beat the Terrapins and made their moment.
Houston football had steadily improved under Yeoman in the late 1960s and early 1970s before the jump to the SWC. However, a Cotton Bowl win leaves a mark which no Bluebonnet Bowl season can ever eclipse.
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While Houston made the most of its leap to a conference at the center of the national conversation, Florida State gained that centrality by staying independent. Bowden used 1976 as a learning experience for himself and his team. In 1977, though, Florida State was ready to take the next step. The Seminoles went 10-2, showing that the struggles of ’76 (a 5-6 season) were worth it, a precursor to a full-fledged emergence in the Florida panhandle.
In that same 1977 season, Houston took a modest step back with a 6-5 record, but both Texas and Arkansas soared that year in the SWC. Texas played for the national title against Notre Dame, while Arkansas actually finished one spot higher (3 to Texas’s 4) in the post-bowl polls. Both Houston and Florida State were just beginning to learn about what it took to not only achieve richly, but to do so on a consistent basis, in the face of every opponent’s best shot.
As you’ll soon see, both programs acquired a very similar trajectory as they cultivated more resilience and skill.
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If 1977 knocked Houston back, the Cougars learned all the right lessons from that autumn. In 1978, they got back in the saddle and won back the SWC from Texas. Earl Campbell was in Houston as a professional with the Oilers. On the college gridiron, Houston welcomed the bruising back’s absence from fall Saturdays. Yeoman’s offense “veered” into form once again, earning another Cotton Bowl berth and showing that UH wasn’t a one-hit wonder in its new league.
In Tallahassee, 1978 was Florida State’s encounter with the reality of heightened competition. If FSU snuck up on opponents in 1977, it didn’t have that same luxury a year later. The 10-2 joyride of ’77 became a respectable but not as easy 8-3 in ’78. However, much as Houston properly regrouped and reassessed its situation, Florida State made all the right course corrections as well.
In 1979, having been knocked down a peg, Florida State redoubled its efforts and went 11-0 in the regular season. The Seminoles were not going to climb past Alabama for the national title that season, but they had a chance to finish No. 2 with a win over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl (seen in the cover photo above). The Noles, however, ran up against an opponent which had been tested in the cauldrons of Big Eight pressure and postseason scrutiny. OU, the defending Orange Bowl champion that season, exuded an easy comfort and familiarity with the Miami environment. It handled FSU without too much trouble.
Florida State lost, but it learned what the big stage was like. The 1977 season and its achievements brought nothing more than a Tangerine Bowl bid. Getting that more precious piece of citrus — the Orange — allowed Florida State to know the feeling of a higher-tier program. In 1980, FSU went 10-1 and earned a rematch with Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. The Seminoles didn’t win, but instead of getting thumped, they lost by one point, 18-17, on this play, at 2:14:40:
Florida State didn’t crush the college football world over the next several seasons, but a pair of nine-win campaigns and a steady stream of bowl appearances maintained the program’s national profile. Starting in 1987, Florida State and Bowden accumulated the top-shelf talent which would create one of the sport’s great dynasties with a streak to match: For 14 consecutive seasons, Florida State finished in the top five after the bowls. The larger labor of love — building Florida State into a colossus — took more than a full decade, but the process which began in 1976 had led to a mountaintop view of the rest of the college football world. Florida State lost a few games here and there from 1987 through 2000, but no program was more ruthlessly consistent during that time.
Had Bowden not led his team through that special journey from 1976 through 1980, Florida State probably wouldn’t have lifted itself to an even greater height in 1987 and beyond.
For Houston, a period of growth from 1976 through 1980 was not followed by an even more glorious multi-decade run. A 1984 SWC championship before Yeoman called it a career was special, but as the late 1980s blended into the early 1990s, Houston hit a ceiling it could not bust through. The Cougars had to settle for the glory years of the late 1970s… but what glorious years they were.
The 1978 SWC championship, referred to above, produced a 9-2 record. Houston would have attained another season with 10 wins or more had it protected a 34-12 second-half lead against Notre Dame and a fellow named Joe Montana in the 1979 Cotton Bowl. However, you know that story — Montana built his legend, and the Cougars were left in the icy cold wondering how they let a large lead vanish.
That kind of result could have floored Houston in the 1979 regular season. Similarly shocking results have often caused collegiate teams to crash and burn. The 1979 Cougars wouldn’t let that happen. They lost only once in the regular season, to Texas. When the Longhorns dropped multiple games in the SWC, however, Houston reached its third Cotton Bowl in a four-year span. The Cougars played another member of college football royalty in Dallas on the first day of 1980. They started the decade and ended their most fruitful period as a program by fending off Nebraska, 17-14, blunting the Huskers’ offense for the balance of the afternoon.
Houston surprised everyone in 1976, absorbed some punches in 1977, and then rebounded to make consecutive Cotton Bowls in 1978 and 1979.
Florida State burst onto the scene in 1977, learned how to cope with its surroundings in 1978, and then built its identity by reaching consecutive Orange Bowls in 1979 and 1980.
They stand on different sides of the tracks today in terms of power, prestige and status, but in the second half of the 1970s, Houston and Florida State conquered the college football world in very similar ways. Led by innovative coaches in talent-rich localities, the Cougars and Seminoles showed what an awakening could look like. Bill Yeoman and Bobby Bowden put the term “sleeping giant” to rest.
As Tom Herman and Jimbo Fisher — also astute tacticians in their own right — lead their teams into this upcoming Peach Bowl, they can know that they stand on the shoulders of the coaches and players who created a new world of possibility four decades ago.
