UTA FB History: Vol. 8 Gm. 9 - Homecoming Game

As the UT Arlington Athletic Department prepares for homecoming week today, This Day in UTA Football History will take a peek at 1963 season's homecoming match.

Back in the days of the Arlington State College / UTA football program, homecoming centered around the football game. Nowadays, the University has done a good job of incorporating all three team sports in the week-long festivities. Today, the Volleyball team hosts California Baptist. Monday, the men's basketball team opens the season with a mid-day game against North Texas-Dallas while volleyball team will play Abilene Christian at College Park Center in the evening. On Thursday, the women's basketball team plays Arlington Baptist at 6:30 pm. On Saturday, volleyball has a mid-day match against Utah Valley while the men's basketball guys take on Louisiana Tech at 5 pm.

There are other myriad activities as well that include students getting involved in the University. This link shows many of those activities.

Back in the day, there were other various events, notably a bonfire and a football game. Other events came and went. Others like Bed Races or Oozeball had staying power, though aren't exclusively homecoming anymore. When I was a student, homecoming occurred in February. There have been changes over the years, but I can't think of a better way than how it is now. If a football resurrection occurs in the future, I hope nothing changes in the current line-up and the just add a football game to the lineup.

Speed Bump?

The skipping record of Western Conference volleyball action where the UT Arlington squad lands two wins in the week continued this past week. It wasn't the flawless victory seen in past weeks but in volleyball, sets matter, though matches matter the most. A sweep is the same mark in the win column as a five-set match. As UTA won the most in both scenarios making another post starts and ends with UTA atop the WAC standings.

It was road-trip week starting in Seattle on Thursday. Much like the 3-0 sweep a couple weeks ago in Arlington, the Redhawks were met the same fate but unlike the Arlington affair, SU was not an easy out in the first two sets. While UTA scored 25 in both, the Redhawks got the maximum points a set loser can have each time. In the third, UTA pushed aside two straight 25-23 wins and secured the match with a comfy 25-13 win, I'll save the individual accolades for later, but it was the same ladies who have been doing the same damage all year.

On Saturday, the Mavericks faced their first real stress in conference play as the Utah Valley Wolverines hosted UTA. After six straight sweeps prior to that affair, UTA lost the first two sets to UVU. You'd have to go back to the second conference match to get to a five-set contest involving UTA. That is what they would be shooting for to keep their perfect conference mark. 

UTA FB History: Vol. 8 Gm. 8 - I Just Wanna Go Home

It's been a while since On This Day in UTA Football History checked in with the 1974 season. In 2013, I opened the entire series with the season opener, a 33-6 loss to Western Michigan in Kalamazoo. In this year's version, the second week of the season was the first feature for the 1974 UT Arlington football team. In that game, the score was closer, but a 12-3 loss is still a loss, even if it was against a Southwest Conference school in TCU. 

There's not much of a spoiler alert, but 1974 was a bad season. There is only one season in the UTA books worse than 1974, and that was a winless mark in 1970. A look at the 129-150-2 overall record of UTA as a University and the .463 winning percentage looks a little below average. Factoring out the two seasons mentioned and all of a sudden, the winning percentage rises to .496, or two games below .500. It was just an incredible amount of poor performance.

And that really was the mark of Head Coach Harold "Bud" Elliott. He was competitive, but ultimately mediocre. He'd win more in 1975 and improve again to a game below .500 in '76. That year, he was a win away from the Independence Bowl, which debuted that year. '76 was also the first year in the 1970's where the offense scored more points than the defense gave up. 

Another Large Step

At some point, I'd expect the record to stop skipping, but another week is done in Western Athletic Conference volleyball action and another 2-0 week for UT Arlington. The opponents are likely the toughest the conference will have to offer and the Mavericks aced the test.

The Mavs are now in the driver's seat for their first conference regular season title in 22 years. Weird to say, but the team sport with the best history, most conference titles and NCAA tournament appearances and wins has had a drought so long that students on campus were not alive for the last titles. 

The conference season is half complete and UTA is up on second-place Grand Canyon by two matches, three games up on third-place Utah Valley and three-and-a-half up on fourth-place Utah Tech and Southern Utah. UTA in now 2-0 against Grand Canyon, while they are 1-0 versus UT and SUU.

They got to two of those three records this past week with two dominant performances, both sweeps. First up was the 'lopes in Arlington. After a 3-1 win in Phoenix, including a 25-8 shellacking in the first set. I firmly expected a tough, hard-fought match.

UTA FB History: Vol. 8 Gm. 7 - Regionality

The halfway mark to the standard football season has passed, so as we start the second half of the season, let's revisit the 1963 season. When we last checked in with that version of the Arlington State Rebels, they lost to one of the best rivals of the 1960's, East Texas State, 8-17. That outcome dropped their record to 0-2.

The following week, the home opener against Sam Houston State, was a close, high-scoring affair where the Rebs had the lead in the third quarter before losing it, regained it in the fourth before losing it and eventually ended the game with a potential game-winning pass broken up at the goal line. In the end it was a 34-28 Bearkat win. Sam Houston would go on to have a winning season at 4-3-1. Proving odds and Vegas lines mean little, it was an interesting dynamic as the Rebels were actually favored in that game.

ASC also set a record they didn't want at the time, but would be broken in 1970 as this was the fourth straight loss for the program, dating back to the prior year. It would be broken later this year and eventually shattered in 1970 to '71.

Big Showdown Looming

 Another Western Athletic Conference week is in the book for the UT Arlington volleyball squad and they repeated the same formula from the previous two conference weeks as they went undefeated, going 2-0.

It would have been easier to stumble in the third week of WAC play than in any other week due what's on tap this week. But as it is, other than some brief hiccups, the Mavericks did not drop a set in two sweeps. The wins moved their conference mark to 6-0 and 16-2 overall.

On Thursday, the Seattle Redhawks came to town and until SU went on a brief 4-0 run near the end of the third set, the Mavericks never took a timeout. That is pretty significant as coaches use timeouts to manage the runs by their opponents. Seattle made mild runs here and there and held brief, small leads. But the Mavs never looked stressed or out of control. By contrast, prior to the SU run / timeout in the third, UTA was leading 24-17 and Seattle looked demoralized. It has been a while since I have seen a Maverick opponent look like they were readily waving the white flag, but I did on Thursday.

Realignment Rumors

At the beginning of the month, I opined on the current state of the UT Arlington Athletic Department's place in the current landscape of college athletics, specifically in regard to their lack of a football program limiting the potential conference landing spots should the Western Athletic Conference lose one more member.

In it, I mentioned the few, limited possibilities as California Baptist is likely a prime target for the West Coast Conference and Tarleton State's Football Bowl Subdivision aspirations will likely lead to a Conference USA spot at a minimum. With few to no institutions willing to join, the WAC is in a rough spot. 

UTA potential could have a home in the Ohio Valley Conference, joining fellow Sun Belt Conference cast-off Little Rock. The Missouri Valley Conference and UTA briefly flirted before nothing formal advanced prior to UTA joining the WAC. The Atlantic Sun Conference likely would be receptive too, but I know of nothing actually occurring between the two.