Despite football loss, it's a red-letter day for UH

This night had been a long time coming. To many, it was about more than football.

The way the University of Houston played Friday night during a 27-7 thumping, thank goodness it was about more than football.

A crowd of 40,755, almost all donned in Cougar Red, made its way onto the UH campus for the grand opening of TDECU Stadium, a $120 million venue that to some is priceless.

It was a wondrous evening. Well, before the game began, that is. On-the-field results aside, it was a huge day for the university.

Velma Whitaker, who enrolled at UH 75 years ago this week and majored in art and English, could not hold back tears as she talked about the special occasion.

"It is so wonderful," the 93-year-old Whitaker said from her wheelchair in Section 304, just above the marker at the 11-yard line in honor of Cougars great André Ware. "This is really fantastic.

"That is why I want to cry. When you think about what this could mean to the school, what it could mean to the city … doesn't it make you want to cry?"

Whitaker attended the Cougars' first football game on Sept. 21, 1946 at the Public School Stadium, and has been a staple at UH games ever since, attending nearly 70 years of games with her husband, Dr. Thomas Norman Whitaker.

Friday's contest was the first UH home game since Dr. Whitaker, a groundbreaking Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair and Professor Emeritus at UH, died in December.

The Whitakers attended UH's first game three years after they were married and not long after he returned from a stint in the Navy during World War II.

Velma Whitaker said her husband was surely there with her and joked that if he were watching from above he might not be able to spot her.

"Look at all of these red people," she said.

Beaming in her bright red Cougar jacket, which she has been wearing to games "since the color was invented," she was hardly lost in the crowd.

And what a crowd.

Some 20 minutes before kickoff, and some 20 years later than it needed to have happened, TDECU Stadium became the new home for UH football when Renu Khator and Stephanie Sherrodd grabbed an oversized pair of scissors and snipped the ceremonial red ribbon.

The two presidents - Khator of the university and Sherrodd of Texas Dow Employees Credit Union - were part of an impressive sea of red on hand to celebrate the latest indicator that UH is moving into the big time.

As Whitaker said, there was plenty of red all right. Though most of it was Cougar Red, with the official grand opening "Cage Rage" T-shirts dominating the student section, there were a few Rockets Red jersey and Battle Red Texans shirts in the Coogs' new house.

Men in loud red pants, children in red makeup, and a host of coeds in cowboy boots, the skimpiest of shorts and see-through red blouses.

Darling little Lee Joseph, who at 17 months old was one of the youngest fans in the building, sported a red Lil Cougar cheerleading outfit easily outdressing her 11-year-old sister Shai'Anne, the Texas A&M fan.

A certain group in red, the Cougars on the football field, never showed up, as they struggled against the double-digit underdog University of Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners, who insisted on being rude party guests for arguably the most significant moment in UH athletics since Ware won the Heisman Trophy nearly 25 years ago.

The packed stadium, loud long before kickoff, was almost put to sleep by the Cougars' lackluster performance.

It was as if the football team forgot why it was there.

The student section booed UH's decision to punt on fourth-and-1 from its own 34 on its first possession, because that's what students do.

By the time the fourth quarter began with UH trailing 24-0, the students were all booed out.

Velma Whitaker wasn't going to boo, though. She has been around too long, seen too much, to be disheartened by one game, one loss.

"I never thought I would see the day," Whitaker said. "What a fantastic day."

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