As September comes to a close, this day in UTA football history looks at the 1969 team for the first time, sort of. Last week's entry was a link to the 2014 counterpart that opened the season, a 17-3 win. Back in the 1960's, the football season often started after the halfway mark of this month.
I'll let last week's version set the stage for the year, but I do want to add some refreshers. The 1960's were the most successful decade in UTA football history, and it isn't close. In this decade, the Mavericks were 57-42-1, a winning percentage of .575. And that's with one win in 1963 and three wins in '64.
To compare, in the 1970's, UTA had a winning percentage of .370 while the shortened decade of the 1980's was .432. No doubt that number would have been better after 1986, as we'll discuss in a moment.
While this was the best decade in program history, it was the tail end of the best part of that decade. In 1966, the then-Rebels won their first conference title, a 3-1 mark shared with Lamar Tech. In 1967, they won it outright, won their only bowl game and finished the year ranked third in the Coaches Poll and sixth in the AP Poll, though those polls were done prior to defeating number two North Dakota State in the Pecan Bowl.
That momentum carried over into 1968 where they were cruising and were a point away from repeating as conference champs. Of course, the game that they lost was featured in 2013, a 22-21 loss to Arkansas State. That loss broke 15 straight home wins that started as Arlington State College and finished as UT Arlington. If I had access to a time machine and was told I could go to one prior Rebel/Maverick football game, this would be in serious consideration.
What many people fail to realize when they talk about UTA's attendance woes was just how popular the Rebels were. The on-campus venue, Memorial Stadium, was expanded to a seating capacity of 10,022 in 1962. In 1965, they averaged 8,520. In '66 the mark rose to 8.700. For the dominant '67 squad, Memorial averaged 9,200. In 1968, it dropped by 10, 9,190. For this featured year, that would drop to 8,460 after only one home win in five tries, and that win was the last of the year.
I say that because after this 1969 season, UTA had only three more winning seasons in 16 tries. UTA played five home games in September for the entire 1970 decade, though there were five Texas Stadium games against North Texas in September. They went 1-4 in those games. To compare, they played 26 road games. Playing on the road leads to more losses than wins as a general rule and for UTA, it was almost a guarantee. Hard to build excitement with a losing team on the field for its first home game year after year.
On top of it, UTA played the eventually conference championship in the first game of the season often. Five times in a 12 season stretch that was the case. Twice in the 1970's did UTA win their conference opener. For a team that was on the positive side of the winning column overall against Southland teams, that is a bad stretch.
In 1981, that formula reversed. UTA played for a conference title in front of a home crowd for the last game of the year. The crowd was the largest of the year for the finale for the first time since 1973. Overall, that happened at UTA a total of four times. 1966 and '67 were the other two times, though I don't have complete records for some early seasons and 1960 and '62 could qualify.
Point is, I look at these basic circumstances and don't see the doom and gloom others see. I know there are extenuating, outside factors, like changing city demographics, mascot controversies, student body changes, etc. But UTA is consistently in the top half in all other sports when it comes to attendance in whatever conference they are in. Men's basketball saw their attendance triple with the opening of College Park Center. All team sports have at least eight seasons in the last decade and a half in the top ten all-time attended seasons. Potential support via butts-in-seats is not on my list of concerns.
After starting the season on the road 1-0, the 1969 UTA Rebels host New Mexico State on this day in UTA football history.
Taken from the Dallas Morning News, September 28, 1969.
The 1986 opponent will be hard to judge. That comes as an ironic statement since the West Texas State Buffaloes are the non-conference opponent UTA had played the most. In 1986, they would have met for the 20th time.
But WTS, now West Texas A&M took a similar path to the Mavericks as they dropped the program in 1991, though it was resumed the following season. But for this year, the Buffaloes moved to Division II and the Lone Star Conference. In the early days of the rivalry, WTS was an independent. They moved to the Missouri Valley Conference in 1972.
When the NCAA mandated certain schools be relegated to Division I-AA, today's FCS, it hit a lot of conferences hard. UTA's home, the Southland Conference, saw Southwestern Louisiana, now just Louisiana, stay in I-A, today's FBS. McNeese could have stayed, but chose to remain with the rest of the SLC. North Texas State and Northeast Louisiana, now Louisiana-Monroe, were demoted to I-AA as independents and joined the SLC.
As for the MVC, some members of their conference were I-A and the others were I-AA. That created instability. Wichita State dropped the program after 1986. Drake eventually went the non-scholarship route. Tulsa weathered the storm of I-A independence. WTS dropped a division.
The Buffaloes went 7-4 in 1986, a very good record, but at a Division II level. As with most things in football scheduling, there were agreements that needed to be carried out. Two of their games were against Division I. They happened to be road games at Louisiana Tech and Stephen F. Austin. Ironically, UTA disbanding their program actually helped. Instead of a third road game to a higher Division U, as UTA was set to make its home debut today, WTS started what appeared to be a home-and-home series with Mississippi College.
Seeing how WTS lost to La Tech and SFA on the road, as well as a loss to MC at home, I don't believe they would have been able to stop this stacked UTA offense or had enough offensive oomph to power through a good defense. As UTA would have been 2-1 or better, there was anticipation for this season and Head Coach Chuck Curtis was effective in engaging the community, I believe this game would have seen greater than 9,000, probably 10,000 for the first time since the stadium opener.
But, like the rest, it wasn't going to happen in 1986 on this day in UTA football history.
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