Wednesday, February 17, 2016

2016 UH Cougar football schedule released

Last week, the 2016 University of Houston Cougar football schedule was released:

     Sat Sep 03     Oklahoma (Advocare Texas Kickoff, NRG Stadium)
     Sat Sep 10     Lamar
     Thu Sep 15    at Cincinnati
     Sat Sep 24     at Texas State
     Thu Sep 29    UConn
     Sat Oct 08     at Navy
     Sat Oct 15     Tulsa
     Sat Oct 22     at SMU
     Sat Oct 29     UCF
     Sat Nov 05    (off)
     Sat Nov 12    Tulane
     Thu Nov 17   Louisville
     Fri Nov 25     at Memphis

All in all, a pretty good schedule. The Coogs play two schools from “Power 5” conferences, including a blockbuster season opener against the Sooners at NRG Stadium. Two of the Coogs’ five away games are in-state, and there’s only one instance of back-to-back road games early in the season. The Cougars spend what amounts to a month at home between the SMU game and a Black Friday matchup at Memphis.

I could do without the two Thursday night home games – those always negatively impact attendance – and I would prefer the off week to be a couple of weeks earlier, but really, there’s nothing horrible about this slate of games. I’m already penciling in roadies to San Marcos and Annapolis on my calendar.

Given last year’s success, there’s every reason to expect this fall to be a good one as well. I’m not going to go so far as to predict an undefeated season, however; Oklahoma is going to be tough, Central Florida and Tulane will probably be much improved this fall, and Cincinnati, Navy and Memphis will all be looking to exact revenge against Houston at home. There’s also the reality that the Cougars are losing a lot of talent from last year’s team on both sides of the ball.

That being said, it's hard not to be excited about the 2016 season, and the wait until September is going to be very agonizing!

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