Houston enters the 2022 season more concerned with what it failed to accomplish rather than on successes such as an 11-game winning streak or a bowl win over Auburn. Head coach Dana Holgorsen set the tone in the first meeting of spring practices by showing a picture of Cincinnati, the team that beat Houston in the American Conference championship game, holding the conference title. The move served as a reminder to his experienced and talented roster.
“Our common goal is to win a conference championship,” starting safety Gervarrius Owens said. “We’re even hungrier since we failed to reach that goal last year. No one is worried about personal accolades because we know team success is the way to raise your individual profile.”
With Cincinnati’s roster experiencing a mass exodus after the 2021 season, Houston enters the 2022 campaign with title hopes. The Cougars want to follow the same path as Cincinnati in 2021: Go undefeated, win the conference title, and break into the College Football Playoff. Expectations are that high thanks to the return of Clayton Tune at quarterback, Nathaniel “Tank” Dell at wide receiver, a talented offensive line, and the core of a defense that wreaked havoc on opponents throughout the 2021 season.
“The main goal is a championship,” Dell said. “We tasted defeat last year, so we want to get back there. That loss fuels us. From the moment we lost that game (to Cincinnati) the sense of urgency picked up.”
The loss to Cincinnati was a jarring experience for a team on an 11-game winning streak that began after a Week 1 loss to Texas Tech. Owens said he couldn’t leave the field after the loss at Cincinnati in the AAC title game out of shock. The team rallied for the bowl game. While most teams treat bowl invites like glorified vacations, the Cougars arrived at the Birmingham Bowl on a mission to jumpstart the offseason.
“We weren’t treating the Auburn game like a bowl game,” Owens admitted. “We wanted to showcase how dominant we could be to set a standard for the 2022 season.”
Houston hasn’t won the American Conference since 2015. Building the Cougars back into a conference title wasn’t an easy road for Holgorsen. Houston was 4-8 in 2019, his first season at the helm. The program limped to a 3-5 finish during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. That meant the 2021 season offered Houston its first real chance to thrive under Holgorsen, who watched his team gel in the spring of 2021.
The struggles of the first few years began to pay off when the Cougars overcame the adversity of a season-opening loss to reel off 11-straight wins and reach the conference title game. The win over Auburn was the first bowl win by Houston since 2015, snapping a four-game losing streak.
“Our expectations have increased inside this program since my first year,” said Owens, who arrived the same year as Holgorsen. “It takes time to build a culture. We gravitated towards what Coach Holgorsen and Coach [Doug] Belk were preaching, and we’re seeing it come through over the years.”
A move to the Big 12 is on the horizon. The Cougars don’t know if the move takes place in 2023 or 2024, but the program is readying for the journey behind the scenes. Houston hopes to break ground soon on a new facility. The move also helps in recruiting, and Holgorsen is already seeing the evidence at the prep level and with transfers. The Cougars added 11 players at midterm, including four-star wide receiver Matthew Golden and Oklahoma linebacker transfer Jamal Morris. The move also raised the assistant coach’s budget, allowing Houston to retain Belk as defensive coordinator.
That transition won’t impact the 2022 squad, however. Holgorsen is making sure of that.
“The Big 12 move isn’t talked about with our current team,” he said. “When I’m in front of my current team, we talk about the American and our goals for 2022. Now, closed-door meetings, recruiting, and fundraising, we talk about the Big 12 a lot. But it does not affect the Houston Cougar football team. It wouldn’t be fair to them.”
The Ceiling
The Cougars run the table in the AAC, charging into the College Football Playoff discussion in the same way Cincinnati did in 2021.
The Floor
The Cougars get off to a slow start in out-of-conference play against UTSA and Texas Tech, which bleeds into a disappointing AAC campaign.
Game of the Year
Houston at Texas Tech — September 10
The only blemish on Houston’s 2021 regular season record was a loss to Texas Tech in Week 1. The Cougars can avenge that result, and build a resumé for the College Football Playoff, with a win at Power Five opponent Texas Tech a week after a trip to G5 darling UTSA. A 2-0 start might jumpstart an undefeated regular season.