It's been two weeks since the 1969 UT Arlington Rebels were featured in This Day in UTA Football History. The team picked up a conference opening road win, 34-7 win over the Trinity Tigers. Oddly enough, Trinity would finish with the same Southland Conference record as UTA, despite the lopsided score. The 1969 Rebels were very good on the road, winning four of five.
The week after, the Rebs hosted a higher division school in West Texas State. The Rebels were a member of the College Division, the equivalent of Division II today while the Buffaloes were in the University Division. The result was something that is considered fairly standard in those kinds of games if it were played today, a 41-7 loss. It dropped UTA to 4-3 on the year, all three losses at home. Starting when the team was Arlington State College, the team had a 15-game home winning streak that was snapped in the last game of 1968. Counting that loss, the home winning streak transitioned into four games entering today.
Rebel fans were hoping today would go in a different direction. UTA could go to 2-0 in the conference with a win and it was homecoming. Spoiler alert, the largest crowd of the year would fill Memorial Stadium today, filling the on-campus venue past capacity.
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for today opponent, known then as the Abilene Christian College Wildcats. I grew up in West Texas, a couple of hours west of Abilene and knew of Abilene Christian University as it is known now. I have played a high school football game in their former home stadium, Shotwell Stadium, owned by the Abilene Independent School District. Unknown to me at the time, my future Alma Mater, sans football when I enrolled, had also played there.
As founding members of the Southland Conference, this would be the sixth year of sponsoring a championship, the two teams' histories are tied together. UTA made it known they were working to move up to the University Division. ACC was not. A few seasons into the 1970's, the Wildcats voluntarily left the Southland, which was following UTA's lead and working to become University Division in its own right/ The Wildcats joined the Lone Star Conference, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics entity at the time. It worked for their football program at the time, winning a NAIA national championship in 1973. The LSC joined the NCAA in the early 1980's. They stayed in the Lone Star until now-ACU joined the Southland again when they finally made the move to Division I in 2012.
There were some very entertaining games between the two teams. Arlington State College played ACC four times prior to the formation of the conference. ASC was a College Division Independent for five years, so they were very familiar with each other. ACC was an Independent back then as well. The Rebels went 1-3 in those games.
The results turned in the Rebs favor as conference members though. After losing the first two in 1964 and '65, ASC/UTA won three straight heading into this game. All-time, it is about as even as it could get with the series consisting of an odd number of games. The Rebels/Mavericks were 6-7 against the Wildcats from 1960 to 1972. They never played again after ACC left the Southland.
I'm not sure if the Abilene Christian helped draw traveling fans or not, but 1967 saw two games hit 10,500 in attendance. ACC was one of them. I already mentioned this year was the highest attended game, but it was also homecoming. This two-team matchup was tied for the lowest in 1965 though. But in 1963, it was 500 away from the top game. The proximity certainly didn't help in 1971, the last time they played in Arlington, as only 2,200 showed up in Turnpike Stadium.
After three straight homecoming wins from 1965-67, UTA was trying to prevent a losing streak. In 1968, the Rebels lost by one-point in one of my favorite all-time games. All-time, ASC/UTA was 15-12 in homecoming games. In Memorial Stadium they fared better at 7-4.
With the teams once again in the same conference, as they have been in the Western Athletic Conference for a few years now, there is always the possibility of a renewed rivalry. Though with so many old rivals in the Sun Belt Conference and UTA never pulling the trigger, it seems more of a dream than a hopeful soon-to-be reality. But it would be a fin prospect for me to see them square off like they did so many times in the prime of UTA's football history.
On this day in UTA football history, the Rebels host fellow Southland founder Abilene Christian College for the last time in Memorial Stadium.
Taken from the Dallas Morning News, November 9, 1969.
After last week's title game at Maverick Stadium against Arkansas State, the 1986 schedule moved to one of the longer rivals for UTA, McNeese State. It would be the second straight home contest and barring last week's result, the crowd be really good or par for the course. I'd put the percentage odds of a Maverick win last week between 40-50 percent.
As for the team, this could be a letdown game either way, and it would be the perfect opponent for the Mavs in that scenario. McNeese, despite being a dominant team in the SLC for near a decade prior, was approaching hard times. In 1985, the Cowboys were 6-3-2 and 3-1-2 in conference play. One of the ties was to UTA in Lake Charles, Louisiana. McNeese lost a lot of talent from 1985 and won only two games in 1986. They won just one Southland game, a 38-7 win to end the season. Ironically, their only other win was over Prairie View in the opener.
All that said, McNeese wasn't a pushover. They just didn't know how to win. They lost by eight to North Texas in Denton (3-2 in SLC play). McNeese was short 12 to Louisiana Tech (3-2) in Lake Charles. It ballooned to a 20-point loss against Northeast Louisiana (3-2) at home the following week. In the game that should have been a blowout, the Cowboys lost to the conference champions Indians, 23-14 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
McNeese took a different route than some of the other teams in the SLC to this point to fill the lost game. While Arkansas State and Northeast Louisiana had bye weeks on their scheduled date with UTA, the Cowboys played a non-conference game on November 8, 1986. The Cowboys traveled to the UNI Dome and played Northern Iowa. The 7-3-1 Panthers won in a shootout 55-38.
All that said about the toughness of today's game versus McNeese, I doubt Head Coach Chuck Curtis would allow his team to overlook the Cowboys, regardless of what happened the week prior. He'd look at the results and harp on it to his team. With so many senior leaders, I doubt they would either. In a worst case scenario, I think UTA would be 6-2 entering this game and very likely wins this one.
But, like the rest of the year, it is all just an academic argument as on this day in UTA football history, the Mavericks did not host the Cowboys in 1986.
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