Willie Fritz and Conner Weigman Can Make Houston Football History Without Any Big 12 Help — And Ted Pardee Thinks That Makes Fritz the Clear Coach of the Year

Getting into the College Football Playoffs and making the Big 12 Championship Game is not in Willie Fritz or Conner Weigman’s control anymore. University of Houston football will need help and a 4-0 close to the regular season (no small and) to make either of those happen. But one significant piece of UH football history is very much within reach.

No matter what Utah, BYU, Texas Tech or Arizona do over the last four weeks of the regular season.

This Houston group (6-2, 3-2 Big 12) can become the first UH team to win 10 or more games in back-to-back seasons. That’s right, in the 80-year history of Cougars football, Houston has never posted double-digit victories in consecutive seasons. But that feat is very much in reach for Fritz and Weigman this season.

No help required.

Including the bowl game Houston qualified for back on October 17, the Cougars have at least five games left this season. If UH can go at least 4-1 over those five, it will reach 10 wins. Stack that on top of last season’s 10-3 Texas Bowl breakthrough and you have Cougars history,

“Honestly, it really makes me excited for the program,” Ted Pardee, the college football color analyst who has UH football’s history in his soul, tells PaperCity. “Because we’ve been through so many ups and downs. If you think back to when I was playing, winning 10 games in 1990 was a big deal. It was a really, really big deal. We had to have like the perfect season. And we still lost one game that year. That was a heartbreaker because we lost to the University of Texas. . .

“Ten wins are really, really hard. I think it’s a sign that the program has arrived. It’s on the right track. It is not in rebuild mode. It is one hundred percent doing what we expect it to do.”

Conner Weigman could be the first quarterback in UH football’s storied quarterback history and Willie Fritz the first coach in its impressive coaching history to win 10 or more games in consecutive seasons. That’s something. No matter what anyone else in the Big 12 does.

“You look at what Willie Fritz has done this year, the guy has my vote for Coach of the Year,” Pardee says. “No question about it. He’s put an amazing team together. We talk to other broadcast teams at other schools. And the guys at K-State were like, ‘Yeah honestly, you only have one or two superstars on your team. The rest of your team just looks like a bunch of guys.’

“It’s how Willie gets them to play together that’s so rare. And so unique.”

Pardee sees plenty of Curt Cignetti at Indiana parallels with Willie Fritz at Houston.

“I put him on the level of Cignetti or that type of coach,” Pardee tells PaperCity. “That might be a better comparison. When you think about what Cignetti did at Indiana. Took a program that was nothing and takes them to a national championship.”

This Fritz and Weigman partnership is on the verge of doing something that no UH coach and quarterback combo has ever done together.

Ten wins. Times two.

Heisman hero Andre Ware never did that in consecutive seasons at Houston. Case Keenum hasn’t either. Ditto for David Klingler and Kevin Kolb. Greg Ward Jr. came the closest, following up that 13-1 Peach Bowl 2015 dream season with a 9-4 2016 season. That’s 22 wins in a two-year span. But not consecutive double digit win campaigns.

Any time you can do something that no quarterback in University of Houston’s storied football history has ever done, it is something special.

“If you look at Conner Weigman, what his legacy’s going to be when he walks out of here and goes into the NFL, it’s going to be ‘Look what I did at the University of Houston,’ ” Pardee says. “. . . But he can say I played at Houston, that spent 26 something years in Conference USA and the AAC, and I was a part of the turnaround of that program.

“To make them a national powerhouse. And that’s what we are now. A Top 25 team. And we couldn’t have done it without Conner Weigman, I can promise you that. We couldn’t have done it without Willie Fritz. We couldn’t have done it without Conner Weigman.”

“You look at what Willie Fritz has done this year, the guy has my vote for Coach of the Year. No question about it. He’s put an amazing team together. We talk to other broadcast teams at other schools. And the guys at K-State were like, ‘Yeah honestly, you only have one or two superstars on your team. The rest of your team just looks like a bunch of guys.’ — Ted Pardee

Conner Weigman Tough, Willie Fritz Tough

Weigman did not practice much leading up to the Utah game and left Rice-Eccles Stadium in a walking boot, as PaperCity first reported. His left ankle/foot injury will certainly benefit from the week off and the 14 days between the Utah and Cincinnati games. This is a quarterback playing for history, no matter what else any of the Big 12 teams ahead of the Cougars in the conference standings do.

To Ted Pardee, whose dad is the late Jack Pardee who coached UH to a 22-11-1 record in three seasons, include Andre Ware’s unforgettable Heisman season, Weigman’s toughness sticks out. And makes him a Willie Fritz kind of player.

“I know he was beat up against Utah,” Ted Pardee says. “I know the team was. You could tell. You could absolutely tell. And Conner was fighting really hard. And it’s that time of year when all the guys are starting to get beat up. And yet you see these guys flying around, throwing their bodies around.

“If guys were trying to protect themselves — thinking I’ve got to take it easy because I’ve got to get ready for the (NFL Draft) Combine or I got to go to the (transfer) portal — guys pull off. No one’s pulling off on this Houston team. Everybody’s putting the pedal to the metal.

“And that to me, that’s a Willie Fritz team.”

One with a chance to make some serious University of Houston history. No matter what anyone else in the Big 12 does.

“We’ve got to regroup and and bounce back,” Weigman said the last time he talked to reporters after the loss to Utah. “And get better off the bye week and come back ready for Cincinnati.”

Cincinnati is another big Fox showcase for Fritz’s program (2:30 pm Saturday at TDECU Stadium). A Friday night ESPN standalone game at Colorado beckons the following week. Chances to grab Win No. 7 and Win No. 8. Two more chances for national college football fans to see what Ted Pardee saw early too in Fritz.

“To me it started really with his press conferences,” Pardee says. “He’s very modest. He’s very calm and thoughtful about his answers. He’s super smart. He doesn’t really give you much. He’s a savvy guy. He’s not going to tip his hand. He’s a heck of a poker player. And that’s a part of the job.

“All of that reminded me of my dad and my dad’s style as an NFL guy coming to college. Very different style. Very different approach. Very much putting individual accountability and responsibility onto the players. Which is a way that a lot of pro coaches used to do things. And that’s kind of Willie. He’s putting the responsibility for the success on the shoulders of the players.

“Empower your players to lead. Show them how to lead, but then let them do their job. Let Conner be who Conner is. Let (wide receiver) Amare Thomas become the incredible, incredible player he is.”

This is how 10 wins times two for the first time in UH football history moves into sight, becoming a real possibility.