Among the more than 100 seasons of Texas State football, there are two that stand apart from the others.
In 1981, the school opened an on-campus football stadium and then completed that season by winning an NCAA Division II national championship. The next season, the Bobcats did it again, this time posting a perfect 14-0 record on the way to another D-II title. Those are the two best seasons in program history.
With college football celebrating 150 years of history this season, the Sun Belt Conference is taking a look back at the history of the league’s 10 football-playing schools.
The glory days for Texas State football came when the school had a different name. Southwest Texas State’s best seasons came with Jim Wacker as the head coach. His teams went 42-8 over four seasons from 1979 to 1982 -- including a 27-1 stretch over those two national championship seasons.
The field inside Bobcat Stadium now is named for the former coach, who later returned to the school as athletic director for four years in the late 1990s. The stadium is larger than it was in Wacker’s coaching days. A $33 million expansion for the 2012 season upped the seating capacity to 30,000.
The hope now is to achieve more success. To do so, the current coach and administration is looking to the past. First-year coach head coach Jake Spavital has heard from several players on those championship teams since the school hired him last December.
“That ‘80s group,” Spavital said at Sun Belt Football Media Day, “there’s so much pride and passion; those were like the glory days. They were winning national championships, they were producing All-Americans, and you see that passion.”
Texas State joined the Sun Belt in 2013, after a 2011 move up from the Football Championship Subdivision, which was where the Bobcats began playing in 1984. Before then, they played at the Division II level.
The football program dates back to 1904, when the Bobcats won their first three games without allowing a point. Since then, they have played more than 1,000 games and won more than half -- 540 to be exact.
How good were those early 1980s teams? They not only won those two national titles, but the school also finished atop the Lone Star Conference standings in four consecutive seasons, from 1980 to 1983.
The 1981 team set still-standing school records for points (37.5 per game) and rushing yards (3,205 for the season, 293.2 per game). Mike Miller quarterbacked the team through the 1981 season and his 33 career rushing touchdowns ranked second in school history.
The 1981 team didn’t allow a point until the third game and held its first nine opponents to 10 points or fewer. The Bobcats won the national championship against North Dakota State 42-13.
The next year, the team stayed undefeated, beating Cal-Davis 34-9 to win another national championship.
“They’re the ones that have reached out,” Spavital said of the players from that era. “They come around. They try to support in any way. Some have given a lot of money to the program. They have a lot of pride and passion from that time that they were here.
“When you have people that are passionate about it and supportive, typically that’s going to drive the university forward. It’s up to me to create a culture and keep them involved with it and start to win some games. I think it’s going to galvanize a whole century of former players.”
For homecoming last season, the team sported throwback jerseys with “Southwest” on the team jersey for the first time since the school changed its name to Texas State in 2003.
Through the years, the school has won 13 conference championships, including nine outright titles. Since 1942, the school has celebrated wins with the lighting of the Victory Star, now placed atop the University Events Center.
In more recent seasons, Texas State won a pair of conference championships in 2005 and 2008 while in the Southland Conference. The 2005 team went three rounds deep in the FCS playoffs and set school scoring and yardage records with 518 points and more than 6,100 total yards.
Now in its seventh season in the Sun Belt, Texas State has deep football roots that include those two national championship seasons.
“I think these guys just want to [see this team] have the same success and to be around,” Spavital said about players from past championship teams. “And to come back to the program because they have so many great memories in San Marcos and of just being a student, and also being an athlete.”