The Pecan Park Eagle

Artistic Rendering of the New UH Football Stadium.

With the passing of Robertson Stadium as a 40-17 consolation game win for the Cougars over Tulane at the end of a most disappointing football season, its time to give some thought to larger measures and how the university may be thinking in their plans for naming the new planned venues for football and basketball. I’m not real sure what the target date is for the basketball field house, but we definitely are on board for the new football stadium in 2014.

How about, this time, we forego naming these places in favor of the generous alumni who pick up the biggest part of the tab and name them for the two icons, both still living and capable of accepting our statements of appreciation, who made success possible in each of the two big money sports.

Bill Yeoman Stadium and The Guy V. Lewis Pavilion sound pretty good to me.

What do the rest of you Cougars out there think?

All Bill Yeoman did was coach at UH for 25 seasons (1962-1986) without dumping us over for bigger bucks and “a more prestigious offer” elsewhere. Yeoman’s career record at UH (160-108-8) included four Southwest Conference titles (1976, 1978, 1979, 1984) and a winning record (6-4-1) in bowl games. The Cougars’ win over Nebraska in the January 1, 1980 Cotton Bowl pulled UH to its highest ratings finish in football history at # 4.

Bill Yeoman, of course, is the father of the veer option offense that revolutionized college football, starting with its introduction in the Astrodome in the fall of 1965. That same season, Bill Yeoman’s offense featured the first black player to suit up and start for any of the previously all white universities in Texas. Running back Warren McVea was a runner for the ages,  who later led the 1967 Cougars to a 27-7 upset win over Michigan State at East Lansing in the Spartans’ opening game of their season.

Bill Yeoman is a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Artistic Rendering of the New UH Basketball Court

Guy V. Lewis coached basketball for 31 seasons at UH (592-279), leading his Cougar teams to five Final Four appearances (1967, 1968, 1982-1984) during both the Elvin Hayes and Akeem Olajuwon eras. Lewis was among the first to recruit black players (Elvin Hayes and Don Chaney, 1964) and the major cast of the famous “Phi Slama Jama” team that came later under the leadership of future Hall of Fame greats Akeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

The first future UH Hall of Famer, Elvin Hayes, led the Cougars to a 71-69 win over UCLA in the Astrodome on January 20, 1968, forever changing the scope and scale of basketball in the mind of the viewing public.

Guy V. Lewis was voted Coach of the Year in 1968 and 1983. He was elected to the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

What say thee, fellow Cougars and friendly Houstonian supporters of our Tier One university? Should we honor the dedicated coaches who did the work in the trenches for years to bring accolades to our university? Or do we do what most universities do, sell the name to the folks who write the fattest checks because that’s what they expect to get for their money?