Houston battles through hype and humidity to cement its arrival as a power

The Cougars have everything to gain from a great season -- they can break into the playoff and help their program earn a Power Five conference bid

HOUSTON -- It's 7:30 in the morning, and it's already about 8,000 degrees at a recent Houston scrimmage. Coach Tom Herman is playing air guitar to the strains of "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.

His is not the only program to blast tunes during practice. It keeps the players engaged and, at this hour, awake. The Cougars' average training day this month consists of a 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. cycle.

They are so dedicated and locked in that about 70 air mattresses line the locker room and coaches' offices in the football facility. The Cougars are going at it so hard for so long that, for some of them, it's not worth going home to sleep.

"This is the hardest training camp in college football," Herman crows after the scrimmage. "This is the grind."

In that sense, then, it's not the hype for Houston, it's the humidity.

Among the Cougars' more modest expectations this season are another American Athletic Conference title. On the high end, Herman is not shying away from chasing a College Football Playoff berth.

"If we win all our games, where are we going to go?" Herman asked during National Signing Day in February. "We're going to the playoffs."

The coach knew then he had the only other quarterback beside Deshaun Watson to throw for 2,000 yards and run for 1,000 more last season. Herman knew he possessed the winner of one of the most anonymously significant awards in the country -- the Earl Campbell Award. That made Greg Ward Jr. the best Texas-born Division I offensive player in the country.

The question remains: How can a coach who is so kinetic on the practice field achieve so much with a decidedly subdued kinesiology major -- the study of objects in motion -- at quarterback?

"I don't know," Herman said. "Oh, he's chill."

Chill? Try dry ice. While you're at it, try imagining Ward commanding a huddle. Not only does he have trouble tooting his own horn, you wonder where the sheet music is.

"It's not [leading] by a Ray Lewis speech or Tom Brady speech," Ward said. "It's about action, making plays and exuding confidence. The team will look up to you."

Not only the team, but the whole town. Ward is the triggerman overseeing what could be that playoff run. In leading the Cougars to a 13-1 season, he became the latest Herman quarterback prodigy.

So much so that Sports Illustrated put the Tyler, Texas, native on the cover of regional college football preview issue. Herman quickly pointed out his last four starting quarterbacks have been on at SI cover (Braxton Miller, J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones at Ohio State).

"If you want to get national exposure, if you want to be in the top 25, if you want to be if you want to win a bunch of games, this is the place to do it," Herman crowed.

Ward added, well, nothing.

"It's a blessing," the cover boy said. "That's about all I have to say about it."

Sometimes it's a mining operation to interview Ward. At a recent team dinner, a reporter had to lean in to hear the quarterback's answers.

Ward doesn't particularly like talking about himself. In truth, until last season there wasn't much to tell. As a three-star recruit, Ward had interest from Memphis, Rice and SMU. His only visit was to Houston -- three-and-a-half hours away from Tyler.

Then-coach Tony Levine initially used him as a receiver, yo-yoing Ward between pass catcher and signal caller. It wasn't until John O'Korn lost the quarterback job in 2014 that Ward took over.

Since then, he is 19-2 as a starter. Defenses don't quite know what to make of the 5-foot-10 specimen who can zip a pass just was well as make NFL-bound defensive linemen grasp for air.

As a junior last season, Ward threw for almost 2,900 yards and was in the top 10 in accuracy (67.2 percent). The only other quarterback to rush for more yards than Ward's 1,108 yards was Navy's Keenan Reynolds.

Being one of the best dual threat quarterbacks in the country isn't taught.

"Came from God," Ward said.

Then-athletic director Mack Rhoades made a somewhat surprising decision, canning Levine after an eight-win season in 2014. The opportunity to lure Herman away from Ohio State was too enticing.

Herman had just taken Jones, a third-stringer, and coached him to a three-game national championship run for the Buckeyes.

Ward still remembers what went through his mind.

"That I will actually have a chance to play quarterback, have a chance in this offense and not be moved around," he said.

Remember that Watson-Ward comparison? Well, Watson finished third in the Heisman voting. Ward didn't place in the top 10.

Both beat Florida State, though Ward did it after the ceremony. It's that 38-24 Peach Bowl win over the No. 9 Noles that the entire Houston program is feeding off of going into this season. It was the program's biggest bowl win in at least 36 years.

Ward seemed to befuddle a Seminole defense that didn't quite know what it was dealing with. Ward rushed or passed on 61 of Houston's 81 snaps, accounting for 305 of his team's 448 yards.

"I don't think they expected us not to bow down to them," Ward said. "We weren't really worried about what they thought of us."

The quarterback then went home for a couple of days to take stock of what he had accomplished. Tyler had another conquering football hero besides Earl Campbell, the legendary Tyler Rose.

"It didn't register that we won the Peach Bowl," Ward said. "For that game we were so dialed in and focused that afterwards I didn't realize we had really won and the season was over."

Herman has made sure to swipe left on 2015. Peach Bowl gear is banned inside the facility. Players were given T-shirts with giant black question marks emblazoned on the back. Message: What are you this year?

"You've got to prove yourself," Ward said, " ... we haven't done anything."

On Ward's back this season is more than a possible playoff berth. Houston is desperately making its case to join the Big 12 in real time while the Cougars get ready for a historic season opener against Oklahoma.

Beat OU and the Cougars can realistically start dreaming of the CFP. With that FSU win, the No. 14 team in the CBS Sports 128 at least has planted a seed with the CFP Selection Committee that it can play with the big boys.

Only three FBS programs have won 13 games twice in the last five years: Alabama, Florida State and Houston.

The Cougars are not exactly the first media option in the nation's fourth-largest city. But the university has moved way past its derogatory nickname: Cougar High.

A former commuter school looks and feels like a Power Five program. You might have noticed the Texas governor and lieutenant, as well as the University of Texas' president and chancellor have endorsed Houston for the Big 12.

If nothing else happens this season, Houston has arrived as a program and a school. The institution has been working for years contacting several different conferences about membership. The school has invested millions in campus infrastructure, not just football.

There is a feeling that all of it may continue even if, as many expect, Herman takes the next big Power Five job. In that five-year stretch, those two 13-win seasons were achieved under two different coaches (Kevin Sumlin being the other).

"It's not Greg Ward on the [SI] cover," Herman said. "It's the University of Houston football. It's the University of Houston as a university and the great city of Houston as well."

The coach, the quarterback and the program don't need a sweltering practice back beat to continue rocking on.