Add another Division I football program to the city.
The holidays came early for Houston Baptist University and the Southland Conference as both crossed an item off their wish lists.
HBU joined a conference offering nearby members and a home for all its sports except men’s soccer, and the Southland added its first Houston member and an institution that will soon bring another football team to the league.
The Southland officially extended an invitation, effective July 1, 2013, to HBU on Monday.
The Huskies will begin a football program that will play in the Southland in 2014 and could compete as soon as 2013.
HBU’s Board of Trustees gave its approval to pursue football in June. Landing in the SLC, which is a much better geographic fit for HBU and which enables them to qualify for the SLC’s automatic bid to the NCAA basketball tournament, is a pretty good coup for them. It’s unclear where they’ll play as yet – Dynamo Stadium was mentioned as a possibility in the print version of this story, though oddly not in the online version – but in the end I suspect they’ll build their own facility. I wish them luck as they get their program off the ground.