I would vote for playing G5. Would never support shutting down the program. But, if they shut it down, they would not need any support anyway.
Nothing wrong with being the best at whatever level we would play at. I imagine that the non-football sports would still have opportunities to compete at the highest levels.
We don’t have enough fan support to keep program viable at lower level football unless they drastically reduced expenditures to the bare minimum which I assume they would. I just don’t think I would be interested if we are not able to compete at the highest levels
The facts are we do not know what the next expansion will bring.
At this point all P5 are a possibility including the S.E.C. & I do not mean the Securities and exchange commission. There are no rules set in stone for inclusions or not.This argument comes back every quarter or so. The only reality is that money talks & everything else is hot air.
The only way we get a P5 invite is if any of the conferences think we can move the needle for them in their next tv contract.
“I wish we had some insight into why the SWC added us and more importantly UT supported it.”
Around 1970, when Royal and UT were on top of the college football world, Royal (as UT’s AD) made the call to the University of Houston to invite them into the Southwest Conference. U of H was the most integrated college football team in state history. Texas had barely begun the process.
IMO, Royal invited UH out of his totally unique sense of fair play. By tying UT in Austin in 1968, and establishing themselves as a perennially ranked team, UH deserved to be in the SWC. They were an independent at the time, and were having a hard time filling out future schedules as they became recognized as a football power.
U of H would turn out to be a real pain in UT’s side in the 70’s and into the 80’s. Like OU except more so, they accentuated UT’s lack of black players by simply having way more of them. They had guys like Lombardi Award winning DL Wilson Whitley, that might otherwise have been Horns if not for UH gaining entrance into the SWC.
also try this on this board.
So you can’t rule out UH being in the Sun Belt, SWAC or Division III either, huh?
G5 playoff = Div. II
Those coaches need to grow a pair?
It’s not about needing ‘to grow a pair.’ It’s human nature to desire an easier route to something as opposed to the more difficult one. It’s also human nature to feel somewhat threatened when someone else wants something you already have. Don’t give me this, ‘well, bring it on’ so as to convey you’d not only be up for the challenge, but welcome it as well.
Open your eyes! The bigger conferences don’t need Houston, so why should they want to empower us??? It’s not the smartest of mindsets to adopt in business. It’s not about being scared and needing ‘to grow a pair’ as much as it is about putting your own maximum potential to win at risk! It’s not that hard to figure out.
Again, if adding a school like a Houston would help to legitimize a P5 conference or the members within that conference, I could see how adding Houston would be plausible.
But it doesn’t.
U of H brings little to no value (and certainly not monetarily) to a conference other than being a viable representative on the field of play for that conference. But the P5 conferences don’t need another one of those because they already have that! It’s part of what makes being in a P5 what it is – a POWER conference! The P5s don’t need to get more powerful. They already are! So, why wake the ‘sleeping giants’ of the world?
Having said all that, I certainly think the P5s would be more in favor or replacing members of their existing conference for others, but that’s not a feasible solution, either – which is why I think the only way a school like a Houston gets invited to the party is if a large P5/G5 contingent bands together and branches out on its own to form one large coalition as with the aforementioned 64-school group we very well could see in the future.
Until that happens, enjoy the status quo. At the end of the day, destinations take care of themselves as long as the results are there.
That’s not what the two research firms hired by the Big 12 a couple of years ago said, just the opposite, in fact. UH and BYU were considered the two most valuable schools to add. It didn’t happen because of some political fallout with BYU and also the networks not wanting to pay more.
Exactly! The networks didn’t want to pay more because it wasn’t worth it to them to pay more. Thus, the value wasn’t there.
At any rate, the current institutions would still have to vote in favor of inclusion.
Evidently the other conferences don’t see the value in the Houston market that some think is there.
UH will not know its value until 2023 when conferences and networks start renegotiating contracts. During this time is when conference realignment/expansion should occur. Every G5 team is doing what it can to be prepared for that year in hopes for an invite.
Thats right. ESPN knew long time viability of Big 12 wasnt good, so why pay? …OU, Kansas and Texas refuse to extend GOR…Only a matter of time before OU and Kansas fly the coop to the BIG, and rejoin Nebraska. What Texas does next is anyone’s guess, but once OU bails, they are out the door too, with a perfectly justifiable reason for leaving. After BIG makes their move, then we’ll see what PAC does.
People here talking like the Big 12 is going to stay the same are wrong, because it wont. OU has made that clear from their actions.
Houston is plenty attractive to some leagues ( PAC 12, ACC) and not so attractive to others (SEC, Big 12) so it depends who is doing the courting.
I expect to be a PAC 12 member by 2024, and so does our AD…
Has the AD said so?
I don’t know that that’s necessarily it. The only conference with which we fit well geographically is the Big 12, and they didn’t expand because the networks didn’t want to pay more, that and the out-of-state league teams opposed us. We’ll have to see what happens when the contracts are up in about five more years. If the Big 12 implodes or at least loses 2-3 schools, my guess is the PAC 12 will try to get a foothold by adding UH, Tech, Oklahoma State, and possibly TCU. Doing so would give them the #5 and #8 DMAs along with the central time zone, better access to Texas recruits, and three strong athletic programs–six Top 25 football finishes in the last three years and six NCAA Tournament appearances in that same time.
Reason the networks didn’t want expansion was because it was looking like the 2 best candidates were 2 AAC schools. My guess would be UH and Cincinnati. They were part of the Group A from the tv deal that the AAC signed with ESPN. There’s a clause in the contract that states that if 2 or more Group A schools left or one Group A and one Group B left, the Tv deal could be dissolved. So not only would the networks pay more for UH and Cincinnati by having them as Big 12 members but they would lose the rest of the AAC content. At that point Memphis had shown that they could compete in football and had gotten CFP rankings, UH had won a new year 6 bowl by beating Florida State, UConn had won a National title in men’s basketball and UCF won a BCS bowl in the leagues first year. The league had leverage at that point and could have bargained for a better deal with ESPN, NBC or CBS sports.
This is the only way I see UH is the Pac-12. I’m not sure why everyone has a love affair with it. Arizona didn’t draw any casual fans this year and if you’re going to chalk it up to an 11am start then do you expect fans to stay up til 9 to watch a late kickoff?
Yes the Pac-12 has moved some start times earlier but there are schools which will still want a traditional 7pm pacific kick and weekday basketball would be really interesting.
Unless you add somewhat more local schools (reasonably drivable) then you’re killing most chances to attend a road game.
Agree there are problems with joining the PAC. I don’t know that there are any schools in that league that are clearly big draws. USC was here in '96, the year we won the inaugural C-USA title, and there was a crowd of about 15k. Travel would be difficult. And so on. But all that pales in comparison to the some 25 million additional dollars we would get, the exposure, the better recruiting, etc. And I would hope they would work it so that we would be playing schools like Tech, OSU, TCU, and Colorado more so than Washington State and Utah. But there would be some onerous travel regardless.
Southwest Airlines flies to all PAC cities except Pullman Washington and Corvallis Oregon and nobody flies into those two “cities”.
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