Las Vegas Bowl team history: Houston in the Southwest Conference
Leading up to the Las Vegas Bowl between Houston and San Diego State, the Review-Journal is providing glimpses into each school’s football history. We’ll take a look at each school once per day until game day on Saturday at Sam Boyd Stadium.
Southwest Conference
Dates: 1976-1996
Houston has bounced around conferences as a football program, but its longest stay in one came with the now-defunct Southwest Conference.
The core members were Texas-based schools Rice, Southern Methodist, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Texas Tech, Baylor and Texas.
The conference started in 1915 but Houston joined in 1976 and won the league title in its first year. The Cougars were able to form rivalries with a few other in-state schools in the conference, especially Rice, and won four Southwest Conference titles.
The league’s collapse began in 1991, when Arkansas left to join the Southeastern Conference. Five years later the conference broke up, with Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech joining the newly created Big 12 Conference.
Houston was one of the schools left out in the change, and since then has been a part of Conference USA, the Big East Conference and the American Athletic Conference.
The Cougars have not played Baylor or Texas A&M since the breakup. Houston played Rice last in 2013 and the two schools are set to meet again in the 2017 season.
Ben Gotz/Las Vegas Review-Journal. Gotz can be reached at bgotz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BenSGotz on Twitter.
