Should marketing really be on the head coach in charge? Based on the national commercials alone, I’d say our program is severely lacking on this department.
The school should invest heavily in tv, radio, and billboard ads throughout the city. Let Houstonians know (not just UH alumni) than an alternative to the Texans exist. Reach out even to alumni of other schools that live locally, make UH their second school of choice when it comes to football and have them come to at least a couple of games a year. UH truly should be made a team for the city, with a proud institution that very deeply represents that make up of our community.
It should be impossible to live in Houston and not know when UH plays. We don’t need to rely on alumni to fill our stadium, that’s one of the advantages of living in such a big city! But we do need to set ourselves apart with a huge marketing push as we are indeed competing with other entertainment options. We REEEEEALLY need to up our marketing level and what we have right now is not cutting it. Oh, and winning obviously helps.
I recently joined the board for the UH Architecture Alumni Association. Me and my friend are the only members older than the mid-00’s. No one from the '90s. My generation is lost, but I’ve found the younger generation to be way more passionate about UH in general. Grateful for that!
It’s really weird. We don’t just have apathy we almost have an element of eye-rolling disgust by a segment of our alumni base when you mention the current status of UH athletics, the academics, or anything.
I know many who have no clue who Renu Khator is…nor do they care to know.
This is why I think that Live on Campus is so important and it is time for Renu to get it passed this time.
We are a P5 University now…we should start ACTING LIKE ONE.
That’s because we have tons of alumni from the midwest and east coast. We also have tons who grew up watching soccer in other countries.
In the last few years we’ve added a lot of Louisiana alums.
Yes, we need to grow our own. The real acute way to do it is to recruit Houston. HS kids like the idea of going to school where their classmates play football.
You can turn an entire HS community into UH fans with one recruit.
I’ll catch heat for this, but in the majority of cases, staying home and watching on TV is an outright better experience than watching in the stadium at this point. Call me a bad fan or whatever, but there is not a seat in TDECU Stadium (or any other stadium that I can think of!) that’s better than my couch. The concessions are way cheaper, too. Any money that I’d have spent on going to the game is far better served going to the specific department where I got my degree anyway.
I have said this before on this board. We need to create international themes for at least one home game if not all but the homecoming game.
The patio on the home side and the concourse closest to the IPF would be great places for vendors to set up and offer food from that particular part of the world.
The city and our alumni base is very diverse. We need to try to tap into that. Also, it would make it a really fun event to attend. Something other colleges are not doing.
We can customize the football field now so we can go all out with the themes.
Of course like with all Houston teams(pros included)…if you win big and consistently the fans will come…if you are a loser…good luck getting great fan support… It’s just part of the culture in houston.
I can’t even remember the President’s name when I was there from 95-99. It was an awful time, but I’m still proud to be a UH alum and do whatever I can to improve the school.
I agree that home is easier. But I go so my kids can see the tailgate scene and the pageantry of game day. Its also a way to keep the long Scarlet line intact.
I also go so I can contribute to the program and have street cred as a whiner.
TCU just had an announced 38k for Cal while selling lower level tickets for $10 and having big expectations for this season. Didn’t even look like 25k on tv. I don’t think we will be the program with the biggest attendance issues in the Big 12. TCU and Baylor being small schools without too many diehards will struggle big time if not top 25. Then of course Kansas attendance sucks. I also wonder if programs like Tech and K-State will start to slide without UT/OU if they aren’t winning. Tech student turnout will always be good though since there is nothing else to do.
Our attendance can only go up with the excitement of the Big 12. Current Big 12 teams can only go down losing UT/OU.
Based on the comments, I think you see a parallel between FB success and the alumni participation. 70’s, 80’s we were really good. Then the abyss, we lost a lot of alumni in the 90’s and early 2000’s because we weren’t good and getting left out of the Big XII was devastating.
I’m glad to see current and recent students remaining involved. It takes a while to build up a passionate, sustainable, fan base. But, if you look at a lot of the games on tv this past week and previous week, there’s a lot of fans dressed as empty seats.
Big schools are feeling it, too. Nebraska’s sellout streak is on death’s door. UCLA barely put 25k in the stands for their season opener. Stories like this have been all over the sports world for years, but it’s really accelerated this year. It’s probably time to start preparing ourselves for a world in which mass attendance for sporting events is a thing of the past.
One thing I noticed is that there are a number of UH alum that are first generation graduates and are trying to encourage their sons/daughters to attend in the future.
When I was in high school, a lot of my classmates went to the same university their older siblings/parents went to and many of them did not want to go to UH.