I’m sure some of you know if we can go the independent route and capture some of the value back from ESPN?
Been there done that
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No chance. Basketball and our Olympic sports would die as we’d have to house them in the Southland (maybe). Plus, we don’t have the national following that BYU or Notre Dame has to make it worthwhile.
Why does this come up every year? In today’s TV landscape, very few schools can survive being indy. Absolutely ZERO chance Houston could survive being an indy. ZERO.
C’mon now, this is absurd. There is no way UH can survive as an independent. No TV. No Bowl games. We would become more like a Houston Baptist than even a Rice.
I actually think we would have a better schedule and a better TV contract as an indy. On the down side, we’d have virtually no access to a New Years Day bowl. That said, our schedule would likely feature 4 to 5 P5’s a year–so it balances out to some degree.
The biggest issue is our Olympic sports would be in bad shape. I don’t think indy is really viable right now unless you are willing to throw you’re Olympic sports under the bus.
Hey, at least we haven’t had a stadium expansion thread in a while.
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Why do you think we would be able to schedule 4-5 P5s each year? BYU has been struggling to get more than 4 or 5 P5 games and that is with a guaranteed one every year (Utah). They also have a much bigger draw because of a national fanbase, plus the P5s near them are willing to play (Arizona, Arizona St, Washington, Washington St, etc). Since UT, A&M, LSU, TCU, Baylor (well maybe they would now) wont play us, it is hard enough as is for us to get 2 P5 games a year, I couldn’t imagine the issues getting 5.
IMHO, if we were misguided enough to try to go independent, we would have trouble scheduling any P5 teams at all until, that is, our recruiting suffered greatly and we had diminished our capabilities by having to schedule and play such teams as Rice, UTSA, UTEP, Sam Houston, Texas State, Houston Baptist, Lamar, McNeese State… with none of these games even being on TV.
That would be a recipe for disaster and thankfully Tillman Fertitta and Renu Khator aren’t that stupid.
But, they swung and missed. Obviously Cantor is overpaid.There is no doubt that bumping along in the AAC until Mr Right comes along is a safe option. It’s just not a very good one
I think the Coogs could make it work, but there has to be some bold thinking. Also, the playoffs now favor teams with a tougher strength of schedule. That makes UH an attractive challenger.
I’m just tired of wallowing in mediocraty. I want something better and am willing to risk what we have and epic failure to get it. The AAC will be there if we get homesick.
What do we have to lose? The Birmingham bowl? 2mm in allowance ? Please, we’re built for speed now
No.
Well, there is little up side to playing BYU. Its not like Utah is in a hot bed of recruiting. Plus there are zero P5’s in the area. We have 5 P5’s in our state and we are in an area that P5’s find attractive to play in.
BYU gets P5 games by doing 2-for-1’s. We’d likely have to do the same thing to beef up the OOC and we’d have to add back a FCS buy game to keep the schedule somewhat balanced. Look, we arent going to get Michigan, Alabama, and Ohio State in here every year. I get that. But I think we could get the same type of lower and mid-tier P5’s we have now and an occasional “name” by doing a 2-for-1.
Right now we have 10 total crap CUSA level games on our schedule every year. Do you really think we cant improve on that? Really? I mean, seriously…Im just saying the bar to beat is set pretty low.
That said—Im not advocating it. Late season scheduling is a really tough, there is no access to a major bowl, and your Olympic programs would be destroyed. Im just saying it could be done, but its down side outweighs its up side.
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If you want to go independent, you have no clue how much TV revenue and NCAA tournament revenue UH would be losing out on.
Can you list out some of these deals because I just looked at their schedule from 2014 to 2025 and I see one 2-1 in USC’s favor and another 2-1 against Stanford but in BYU’s favor.
If all you saw was the USC deal and your premise was built on that, you need to go with decaffeinated.
Absolutely not. As much as we all love UH, we have absolutely no leverage to get anything out of being independent. We’d wither and die.
The program that would be most solid going independent would be UT since they already have the network deal.
If you take into account that ESPN actually spent money to not have UH and another school added to the Big12, we definitely wouldn’t make any more ESPN as an independent as we do getting our share from our conference. We would probably be told that we have to play every game on Thursday or Friday nights too. lol
In this day and age where TV contracts are the primary source of athletic revenue, only a few schools like Notre Dame have a large enough national fan base to enable them to negotiate an lucrative enough independent TV contract.
UH certainly cannot.
Thus, the answer is NO.
We might be able to get a better overall schedule, but I highly doubt it. Either way it doesn’t matter, a slightly better schedule wont get us any tv money and that is the main point.
Currently our schedule this year has 3 teams in the top 25, last year we had 4 top 25 teams. We lose an extra game with the conference championship. We wouldn’t be able to get Navy on our schedule going forward. Not even looking at the P5s, BYU also has Boise St every year which is a great game. I just don’t see us getting many good games. Look at 2020, right now we have Kansas, Rice, and Georgia Southern down. We have been working hard to get another P5, one more not 4 more. Time is already running low on that since schedules are mostly done many years out. I bet we would end up with a bunch of teams like SMU, Texas St, UTSA, etc.
More likely the Missouri Valley or Summit but yeah, pretty much the same difference.
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Half the teams that play BYU don’t play them in Utah. What we do know is a game against them will be televised and have solid attendence unless the other team doesn’t do their part. It also won’t hurt a team’s SOS unless it’s a really bad year.