I remember the days of the early 00s when the NCAA floated some rule about having to average 15k for football, and some folks had extra tickets so a bunch of us were going in and out of Robertson to inflate the attendance 
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During my time, UH was transfer U or fallback U for local kids who went to out of town or out of state schools and came back only to just focus on their degree.
I work with many UH alums who have never visited TDECU or Fertitta Center.
Which is why Fritz is organically recruiting high school kids who want to play for UH rather than stocking up from the portal.
I get that situations change due to lack of playing time, coach leaving or getting fired from the previous schools but I rather not be a transfer school.
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As of 50 minutes ago, menâs hoops on social media has reposted that there are still student tickets available for todayâs game.
The first place Big 12 team. Number 5 in the nation. And we canât find 900 students that want to go.
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I was recently talking to a student and he said that many people want to go to the games but they sellout and then some students no show. And then a lot of people donât care or even know thereâs a game going on.
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UH fan is no different from City of Houston fan. Just a bunch of bandwagoners. It is what it is.
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except for coogfans
Itâs true. Parents on UH Facebook complaint of same thing. Their kids could never get tickets to football and basketball games. Somehow, itâs always sold out but we see bunch of empty seats in student sections. Are we positive that students could sell their tickets on secondary market?
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Thank you for your response. With all due respect I 100% disagree with you. Please keep an open mind on this.
Granted I do not live in the greater Houston area. As an alum I have travelled to different states to attend our games. I am in the alum data base. On occasion I get an email about donations and others about our Bauer School of Business (I majored in Business) Very rarely I get an email about a watch party inâŠHouston. Apart from this zero engagement. I am not for getting pop up ads from my alma matter but at least why donât our alum association have a page dedicated to Nationwide watch partiesâŠif they exist.
This is for the greater Houston area.
How many alums live in the greater Houston area?
How many contact info do we have for each of these alums?
How many of these alums have attended games these past five seasons and which sport?
How many âpricing optionsâ do you have for these alums?
How many âpackagesâ do you have for these alums? With the power of NIL this can only help.
How creative is our alum association to âsellâ merchandise such as jersey, shirts, jackets to our alum? I know we have the website bookstore. What about selling worn jerseys, Tâs etcâŠ
How many of these alums have sizeable companies? Remember NIL?
How many alums have a U of H decal/license plate frame on their vehicles? What about giving one to each alum? These are made overseas. A partnership should help.
How many alums have been contacted on what should be done to bring in more alums/U of H fans to games?
Has any alums seen a questionnaire on why they are not going to games and what would it take to get them to games?
How much marketing is being done to reach:
Elementary, middle and H.S.
Football coaches.
Pee wee programs.
How much is being done on campus to reach students to attend games?
Not directed at you. The black and white response to any questions is:
It is not working what are you going to do about it?
We are in a Power Conference. Status quo is not getting it done.
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I donât know. The student I talked to said they sell a limited amount of student tickets. They try to pack in as many people in the cage and this leaves empty seats behind the band.
I asked him why they donât sell more then and he didnât know. I thought that they could just sell as many as possible, pack them into to the cage, and put the rest behind the band. and if thereâs more leftover just have them stand up or something. Maybe if we consistently had more students they would change the design to allow there to be more room for students.
Also, from what Iâve heard everyone tries to get their student tickets when they drop and the website crashes and when they go back theyâre gone.
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My pre-UH experience before I applied and enrolled was when Briles came by my high school to recruit a few teammates from my football team.
I didnât attend a rich or well funded high school so only public universities came to our college fair which was mostly UH, UT, A&M, TSU, PV, UTSA etc.
He would give a quick speech about UH and all that stuff and tell us about the local high school combines and camps they hosted during the 2000s.
For many of my high school classmates, UH was the preferred destination along with UT and A&M.
I started UH in fall of 2008 which was SCUMlinâs first season and with Keenum,so the upward momentum was there from the Brilesâ days.
During my time at UH, we were involved with tailgating for most seasons in my student organization but only a handful showed up out of the hundreds registered to my organization.
Many of my UH classmates during my time worked on the weekends or were doing weekend classes which resulted in some not being able to attend games as a student.
I was in charge of the tailgate crew in my student organization so it was sometimes a chore and took up nearly half my day.
I still keep in touch with my tailgate friends from undergrad and we buy season tickets and all but it wasnât until Herman came in 2015 when more of my old classmates decided to attend more games and buy season tickets.
Right when Herman left to UT and Applewhite came in, many of us who graduated had families or moved out of Houston.
By the time Sampson had a consistent top 25 program in 2018 or Holgorsen getting hired in 2019, many of my friends decided to not renew season tickets or attend games due to raising a family.
Thankfully I donât allow my family duties to interfere with my support for the Coogs since I have season tickets for football but I understand.
If you are an active Coog fan raising a family and also living in the suburbs, then I have all the respect for you especially when you have to drag the wife and kids to the game and dealing with late nights for 7pm games or waking up at 6am for 11am games.
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YOU are awesome and doing your part but is our school doing the same? The answer will be no. That is why it ticks me off when i read that our very own Bauer Business School comes out with a Taylor Swift business course. nothing against Swift but i find it insulting that with:
Landryâs (Fertitta)
Bauer School of Business
Hilton Management School
We canât come out with a âthink tankâ to at least improve our lack of fans support.
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When were the tickets made available to the students for the games and if theyâre not already claimed by now why arenât they made available to season ticket holders or to Coog fans (to buy)?
I just donât understand that theyâre trying to get students to claim tickets the day of the game (or even the day before). There should be a cut off point days before the game and if tickets are still left make them available to others who want to go and it would help these people who might buy the unclaimed student tickets a few days to decide if they want to go so they can coordinate things on their end instrad of scrambling to make arrangements the day of the game.
But bandwagoners would imply the #1 in the best basketball conference and #5 in the country would be packed and students waiting outside to get in.
I prefer the tickets made available the day before or day of the game so the students donât scalp them.
They need to implement what airport security does and validate that the student who was issued the ticket is the one using it but knowing the security people, I doubt it is enforced.
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Fans will come when they want to come.
No amount of advertising will drag people to the games.
Heck even during 2015, coach Herman called out the whole city to come to games.
Even during our 2021-2022 season, we saw plenty of empty seats at Fertitta Center.
It even happens to the Astros during the WS seasons, there were plenty of times at work where I couldnât give away our corporate tickets for free.
No need to, students get their tickets through the UH app. And they know when all the tickets are taken, so no need to camp out.
You canât scalp them, as the bar code is generated when you get to the game, I suppose if you trust someone with your phone for 3 hours you could scalp them.
Again I respectfully disagree. IMO our entire administration has to ask themselves the following: We now play in a Power Conference what can we do to to bring people in?
I mentioned it before Larry Lucchino took on the San Diego Padres G.M. role. Prior to his arrival fans support was in the tank. He created all sorts of incentives and the fans came. I have not seen anything creative/positive coming out of our administration to improve/reach fans support to a new level. It is never too late.
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Months ago there were multiple notices that went out saying season tickets were âSOLD OUT!â Maybe next year we shouldnât advertise all the games as being sold out, so people continue to inquire about available tickets.
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Other than free giveaways or first 5000 attendees gets free food, I donât know what to do in order to increase attendance for students and fans.
Maybe we can have hot chicks as ushers or the babes from Ritz as the halftime entertainment.
Shasta Clause during the month of December didnât help attract families.
We donât have many t-shirt or non-alumni fans like other state schools.
Our competition during the college basketball season is the Rockets and Texans (November to early January).
Or have a live cougar from the Houston Zoo chase around its prey similar before the game similar to the eagle in the MLB game in the YouTube link below.
