Imagine that: Houston benefitting from Keenum's knee blowout
By Dennis Dodd | CBSSports.com Senior College Football Columnist
Just remember on Jan. 3 that it's the knee, not the arm.
If you need a single reason why Houston will be running out on the Superdome floor for the Sugar Bowl that night, please refrain from concluding the obvious: that the only reason the
Cougars are there is because of quarterback
Case Keenum's right arm.
That's too easy, too obvious. Keenum already possesses just about every NCAA passing record worth owning. Riding the nation's No. 1 passing offense, Houston is the latest non-BCS darling to storm the gates of the establishment.
Houston quarterback Case Keenum has the Cougars in the BCS hunt. (Getty Images) But it's not just that obvious arm that has produced an NCAA career-record 17,537 passing yards and 144 touchdown passes. It's more the reason that arm is still hurling footballs in college. That would be Keenum's equally significant right knee, the one he shredded in the third game of the 2010 season chasing down UCLA's Akeem Ayers after an interception. At the time, it was game over, season over, career over,
dreams over for the fifth-year senior. At the time a rare convergence of factors hadn't even been considered: The NCAA giving Keenum a sixth year of eligibility; Houston then getting off to its best start in history; Boise losing Saturday.
All that happened since January, opening the door to everything ...
... an undefeated season for a city school that it is perhaps the fifth media option in Houston and definitely 71st in ticket sales nationally.
... more momentum for a new on-campus stadium that would replace Robertson Stadium, the current venue that would fit into Michigan's Big House 3½ times.
... the Sugar Bowl, which is Houston's likely BCS landing spot if it beats SMU and Tulsa and wins the Conference USA title game.
... the Big East, which is courting a program in the national landscape that’s neither Big nor East.
That last point might be the most significant. Houston is among a handful of schools scattered across the country waiting for the Big East to finalize expansion plans. That would make it, for now, big time again after playing for 15 years below college football's Mendoza line in Conference USA.
The main case about Case: If there is no injury, there is no Keenum. He'd be off to the NFL somewhere. With no Keenum, it can be argued, there is no undefeated season. With no undefeated season there is no BCS shot. Without the winning, the momentum and the BCS run, Houston may not be in the position to be rescued by the Big East. Such is the whirlwind pace of conference realignment.
Such is the wonderful fallout from a torn knee ligament.
"When I look back," Keenum said, "I'll be almost glad it happened."
Those weren't exactly the thoughts of anyone near the program 14 months ago. In the same game, Keenum went down along with backup Cotton Turner (broken collarbone).
"Sometimes you sit down and you think, everything happens for a reason," said Houston AD Mack Rhoades. "Candidly, for at least that moment, we were all in shock. ... That may have been the beginning of a rallying point for our program."
No matter what happens the rest of 2011, coach Kevin Sumlin is one of the hottest properties in the profession. He was the guy who held it together last season when the win total went from 10 to five. He's the guy with the highest-ranked team in the state of Texas. It is a widely held belief that the 47-year-old former Purdue linebacker will cash in on this season for a big-time job somewhere else.
"Kevin Sumlin," said Mike Leach, whose influence permeates the program, "will be out of there after this season. He needs to leave this year because it's not going to be that way all the time."
We'll see. Sumlin is 33-16 in his fourth year at the school. That best start in history, 10-0, marks the second 10-win season in the past three.
"He's going to be in hot, hot demand," said Ted Pardee, the Cougars radio color man. "The question he needs to ask himself is what is his legacy as a coach? How far do you want to go to create your legacy?"
At the moment, that legacy is still being built at a commuter school that is paying Sumlin $1.2 million a year. Decades from now, these days may be nothing more than a basic foundation for a glorious career elsewhere. For now, it's a place where Sumlin, once Bob Stoops' offensive coordinator at Oklahoma, is figuring out his program's new celebrity status.
There is a cost to glory, even in the Big East.
"I'm making two big assumptions," Pardee said. "We're going to be in a BCS conference next year, and we have to pay him."
The desperation of conference realignment is making legends out of one-time loss leaders. Availability is sometimes all the qualification you need. Houston wasn't good enough for the Big 12 but is seen as a key component to keeping the Big East’s heart beating.
And no matter what you think of the BCS, it has had a way of making stars out of the anonymous. Remember what TCU, Utah and Boise were before getting into BCS bowls. Utah and TCU are in BCS leagues. Boise may be heading for one. Houston could be next, after becoming the 46th school to play in a BCS bowl.
"That's what scares me," Rhoades said of the BCS. "Every time I talk about it, I don't like talking about it."
If the Cougars do get to the Sugar Bowl, they'll be familiar with the surroundings, if not the competition. Houston beat Tulane 73-17 in the Superdome on Nov. 10. If there is another visit in January, the stands figure to be a bit more filled.
"I fantasize [about being there]," receiver Patrick Edwards said. "I visualize myself. I visualize the team."
Houston's pedigree is from another conference decades ago: Hall of Fame coach Bill Yeoman is credited with inventing the veer option offense. The one-time Southwest Conference power won three league titles in the '70s. That was Houston coughing up a big lead to Joe Montana and Notre Dame in the epic 1979 Cotton Bowl.
Ted Pardee's father, Jack, brought the run-and-shoot offense in 1987. John Jenkins followed as head coach. Ted Pardee played linebacker for both.
"The players loved playing for him," he said of the flamboyant Jenkins. "You loved it because his single goal was to completely kick that team's ass. He didn't care."
During a swift rise-and-fall over six seasons, sportsmanship was never the first priority with Jack Pardee, Jenkins and Houston. The offensive faucet was never turned off. In the same year they scored 95 points on an SMU team just emerging from the death penalty, Andre Ware won the Heisman. That was 1989.
"You couldn't fake it in the Southwest Conference," Ted Pardee said. "You had to shut down the triple option. That was sort of the secret weapon, right? We were the first team to introduce four wide receivers."
Other reasons why 10-0 seems so sweet ...
All-time NCAA major football infractions cases: Four.
Last Jan. 1 bowl: Cotton in 1985.
BCS bowls: None.
You might say it's been awhile.
"I remember when I was in high school telling people I was coming to Houston," said Keenum, an Abilene, Texas, native. "They asked if it was even a Division I school."
With their record-setting quarterback in 2009, the Cougars won 10, beat Oklahoma State and Texas Tech in back-to-back games and entered the polls for the first time since 1991.
Without Keenum for the majority of the season, the Cougars dipped to 5-7 in 2010. The entire program then hung on the NCAA decision to award the franchise quarterback a sixth year of eligibility.
Really, what was there to decide? Keenum, 23, is a credit to the program and the human race. He is married, a 3.8 student in grad school. Saturday will mark his second senior day. The first was last year when he came out on crutches.
"That wasn't the senior year I wanted to have," Keenum said.
So the school understandably went to the wall to get that sixth year -- a 100-page report to the NCAA. There were documents from doctors and trainers, letters of recommendation from dignitaries. What else did the NCAA need? This wasn't some dude trying to game the system.
"We covered all our bases, left no stone unturned," Keenum said this week. "It seems like it was 10 years ago."
It was only 10 months ago. If there was any doubt about the quarterbacks' resolve, it went unquestioned during the agonizing months of rehab.
"When Case says he feels like he's playing on borrowed time and is extremely appreciative for every day he plays the game now, he means it," Sumlin said. "That's kind of permeated through our team, a guy who comes to work and sets the pace."
The football descendants of Pardee-Jenkins teams are still scorching the earth. Eight times this season, Houston has scored at least 48. But there is more of a foundation, a legitimacy for today's snooty BCS establishment. The running game produces 173 yards per game, which is more than Clemson, USC, Oklahoma and Penn State. Houston has rallied three times from double-digit deficits.
"I feel like we have a big-time college football program and we deserve the attention that big-time college football programs get," Keenum said. "Our fans deserve it, our alumni. ... When we're playing our best we can play with any team in the country."
But Houston will have to own that offensive rep. In the past four weeks, it has scored more points (265) than 58 teams have all season. In the past five games, the Cougars have averaged more than a point per
minute. The current scoring average of 54.7 points puts Houston close to becoming the highest scoring team of all time. Army averaged 56 in 1944.
"I hope we have a good reputation with people. I hope they like watching us play. I like watching us play ...," Keenum said. "I'd rather watch one of our games rather than a 6-3 defensive rout."
Does Keenum mean, perhaps, 9-6, the score of the LSU-Alabama game, the antithesis of Cougar Ball?
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly," he said. "That's where I was going."
There is that decidedly Leach feel to the whole thing. Art Briles left Texas Tech's staff to take over Houston in 2003. Current West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen -- a former Leach assistant -- spent two seasons as Houston's offensive coordinator. The current guy calling the Cougars' plays, 32-year-old Kliff Kingsbury, was Leach's first big-time quarterback at Tech. "Obviously, they work on all cylinders through Case and Kliff," Leach said. "They're going to be tough for anybody to beat."
That leads us to the most common question heard on campus this week:
Where were you when it happened?
Co-offensive coordinator Jason Phillips was recruiting in Louisiana. TCU cornerbacks coach Clay Jennings texted him, "You owe me a box of cigars." Sumlin had a similar experience while he was watching the Texas A&M-Kansas State game on TV Saturday.
"All the sudden I started getting a lot of calls and text messages," he said. "I figured out it had happened."
That would be the end of Boise's 35-game home winning streak, the nation's longest. That 36-35 TCU victory opened the BCS door for the Cougars. At No. 11, they are now the highest-ranked non-BCS school. More important, they are in the top 16, the range needed at the moment for automatic BCS bowl qualification.
It's not going to be easy. This week's opponent, SMU, beat TCU. Tulsa looks like the new Houston -- on the come -- having lost only to Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Boise.
When those Broncos finally lost, Keenum's phone lit up too.
Holy crap, the text read.
"You don't want to have to count on anybody else or any committees to decide where you want to play," Keenum said. "I don't want to one day look back and say, 'We could have done this, we should have done this.'"
Holy, indeed. There is a higher power, perhaps, that allows a blown-out knee to mean the return of a golden arm.
2010 Schedule
