Football season is back upon us as today marks the first game for most Universities. As such, This day in UTA Football History resumes today as well. The seventh volume is an interesting year, as it is the first where the seasons featured have been featured in prior editions.
For those new to the blog, the This Day in UTA Football History series chronicles the history of the football program corresponding with a historical game from the past played on football Saturday. I try to provide a variety every week and want to avoid back-to-back weeks from the same year. That gets harder on a second run through.
As UTA played 27 University seasons, that means an average of roughly four season per year, give or take a season. Obviously, at some point, the seasons are going to repeat at that's what is occurring this year.
So for the first time, I'm going to have to say the same thing in a different way, but not today.
UTA rarely played in the first week in September. Of the 27 four-year seasons, they played on September 7th or earlier only eight times. They played on this date once, in 1978. That'll happen another time in this volume. As such, I won't create an entirely new entry, but rather just provide a link to the original entry.
Prior to the start of the 1978 season, the sports information directors of the Southland Conference voted UTA to finish third. Louisiana Tech received five of the six first place votes. Arkansas State received the other. The Bulldogs got 35 points in the poll. I don't know the rules, for example prohibitions against voting for your school, but 36 points can be the maximum. The then-Indians tallied 26.5 points while the Mavericks logged 23. Not everyone was sold on the Mavericks finishing as high as third, but they earned enough points to get within spitting distance of third.
Head Coach Harold "Bud" Elliott was entering his fifth year and was high on his team. This was the first year where he said the UTA team expects to win in the preseason. Looking back with the advantage of hindsight, they were a good team and probably should have won more games than they did.
As the intro to the link attests, there was a lot of talent on that team. Locally, optimism was high. If the pieces fell right, UTA would be a contender. They actually were, carrying a fourth quarter lead against the Techsters before mental mistakes and turnovers, a hallmark of Coach Elliott's tenure, took their toll and they lost by seven to the defending and eventual champion.
There was another reason for optimism. After abandoning Memorial Stadium, the long-time on-campus home of the team, for Turnpike Stadium, the eventual home of the Texas Rangers, UTA's football home was very sub-par for a decade. Starting in the prior year and continuing until the end of 1979, the Mavs made Cravens Field their permanent home. Built in 1975 for less than half a million dollars, Cravens is on the campus of Lamar High School and was a nice high school stadium at the time. But it was not a college stadium.
Announced in late 1977, the UT system regents green-lighted the planning of an on-campus stadium. Architectual renderings were made public in the first half of 1978 for what would become Maverick Stadium. UTA would finally look like a Division I school. UTA was openly showing everyone, media, recruits, officials, etc. everything they were offering with Maverick Stadium. Hard to gauge that kind of optimism. But it did permeate the Athletic Department.
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| Image from the back cover of the 1978 football media guide. Note the stands cover end zone to end zone, rather than from the 15-yard lines. Maverick Stadium's design allows expansion to the above rendering. |
With a sense of optimism not seen in near a decade, on this day in UTA football history, the 1978 squad opens the season in Des Moines, Iowa against the Drake Bulldogs.
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