College baseball, UH consider wooden bats

Say What?

D. Ryan Monceaux

It comes up every year. It's bound to come up again next week when Cougar baseball takes on Texas. Houston cannot get over its inferiority complex.

The Cougars, whether they be the alumni, coaches or athletes, have continued to live in the past for too long. This school, for all of its storied tradition in a fairly compressed time period, needs to realize that the greatest years are still ahead of us and the past is just that: the past.

Since 1946, the athletics programs at UH have accomplished a great deal, and no feat was more impressive than breaking the racial barrier. Honorable men such as Guy V. Lewis, Bill Yeoman and the like were leaps and bounds ahead of their counterparts at Texas, Texas A&M and other southern schools. Embracing black athletes not only made Houston the most progressive school in the state, but also made the Cougars much more competitive in a shorter span of time.

Elvin Hayes was one of those athletes. In an era when Texas won a national championship in football without black players, Guy Lewis and "The Big E" were going to Final Fours prior to the school joining the Southwest Conference. Lewis saw no reason to exclude anyone, especially those who could enhance his team.

Don Chaney, "Sweet" Lou Dunbar and Ollie Taylor were all black athletes whom Lewis brought in during the 1960s. These pioneers were the cornerstones of a program that soon boasted other black athletes, such as Otis Birdsong, George Walker and Clyde Drexler.

Bill Yeoman, inventor of the veer offense in the mid-1960s, also began the practice of recruiting blacks during the same period. Elmo Wright and Robert Newhouse were some of the more renowned black students to play for Yeoman before UH entered the Southwest Conference.

Wright was a consensus All-American in 1970, the first of five black athletes to achieve that mark from UH. Newhouse, who ran for 1,757 yards in 1971, was the second-highest leading rusher in NCAA history.

On the football field, the Cougars' success during the '70s and '80s was unmatched in the SWC. Representing the conference in the Cotton Bowl during three of the school's first four years in the league was unprecedented. Going to Memorial Stadium and embarrassing Texas, edging Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl in 1979 and watching André Ware roll over the competition was definitely the UH gridiron's golden hour.

In basketball, it was five Final Fours. It was Phi Slama Jamma. It was seeing Guy Lewis hurl that polka-dotted towel 592 times. It was coming within a basket of the 1983 national title.

Yet with all of the progress UH has made, and even with the impact the school has had on college athletics, it seems we're still hanging onto the success of a quarter-century ago. There seems to be no hope for the future.

But there is hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Even on the heels of back-to-back 3-8 football seasons and men's basketball losing 20 games last year, there is reason for optimism. It seems that those around UH are standing up and taking notice.

It all began in March -- March 15 to be exact. The Glide came back to campus, to coach the team he loves. It continued on Nov. 17 when his Cougars pulled off a minor coup by roasting the Horns in Hofheinz.

With a bit of luck and a revamped staff and roster, it will be extended through Sept. 4, when Kim Helton's squad hosts Rice in the refurbished Robertson Stadium. Helton doesn't guarantee a conference title and a bowl game, but there is a certain swagger in his walk these days. With a career record of 17-49-1, Helton does have something to prove on the field in 1999.

The bottom line is this: We have lived beneath the long shadow of the Horns and the Aggies for too long. We need to move on. If we can, the Cougars will be on the prowl once again.