Houston has long carried themselves as a Power Five school playing in a mid-major conference, to an even greater level than UConn basketball in the American. Not only are winning seasons expected, they’re the floor. Kevin Sumlin and Tom Herman hit it, and got snapped up by the best of the best, getting jobs at Texas’ biggest schools.
When your school president says “Winning is defined at University of Houston as 10-2. We’ll fire coaches at 8-4,” before your first season as coach, you sort of laugh it off. That was the situation Major Applewhite faced in 2016 after succeeding Herman.