I hope everyone is enjoying their last day before the new year! I’m a student at NKU and I wanted to learn more about Houston’s Rivals and I thought no better way than jumping into this message board. With the help of message board members beginning in 2014, we—the students and professors of the Know Rivalry Project—began answering this question and others related to rivalry in the NCAA FBS. No one knows the rivalries of the Cougars better than this message board community. Please help us update and expand our results to ensure that the Houston Cougars are included by taking 9 minutes to complete our newest survey:
Our previous results have been featured in numerous sports media outlets, as well as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. You can view those results, links to media coverage, and learn more about us at our KnowRivalry.com website BUT we’d prefer you didn’t until you completed the survey via the link above… we don’t want to influence your opinions provided in the survey.
We use the Qualtrics online survey software for data collection. This academic research has been approved by two US universities’ Institutional Review Boards (IRB) and it poses no risks to respondents. You’ll find more information on the disclosure agreement that is required to start the survey. There are plenty of other teams you can look into as well on the site if you had other favorite teams. I’d love to know more in this thread about why certain teams are rivals. Thank you for helping us to include the Cougars by participating and please share this with any other fans that may also help.
Zachary Beal, Northern Kentucky University
Dr. Joe Cobbs, Northern Kentucky University
Dr. David Tyler, University of Massachusetts—Amherst
For my money, Rice is the #1 rival when we play them, which is not every year. Within the American conference, I would go with SMU follow by Tulane then Memphis.
Not all of us agree on a single rival, some will say we have none at all. We have no bon fire before any game, which symbolically indicates the chief rival so we, the alumni and fans, may be at fault if there is no clear rival.
Thanks @Twinmom, I have been wondering who the team felt the rivalry was with. Their point of view is really all that matters.
I grew up in Ohio along US 23, the main route from Detroit (Ann Arbor is very close to Detroit) to Columbus. So before coming to UH, I only knew a rivalry as Ohio St vs Wretchigan (sorry, I still can’t say or spell that word) which is a whole different level of rivalry that actually goes back to a border war in the early 1800’s over which state Toledo was in. I used to joke that Ohio lost that battle.
Anyway, the family of a friend of mine farmed and their home was on a hill overlooking US 23 in both north and southbound. So when the game was in Ann Arbor, they would spell out “Go Bucks” with hay bales so northbound traffic would see it and if the Buckeyes won, a congratulatory message on the southbound facing slope. When the game was in Columbus, they would put “Go Bucks” so all the southbound Wretchigan fans would see it and WHEN they lost, a mildly derogatory message for them to see on the way back.
Forgotten?! Every real CoogFans poster knows that UT, A&M, Tech, Baylor, and Rice conduct all business with the sole purpose of undermining and destroying the University of Houston!
Younger Coogs don’t realize how much us “older” Coogs actually loathe Rice…
They kept us out of the SWC for years, and we were made to play our first “home” games our first season in the SWC at Rice Stadium…
What an amazing cache of data on your site! I love the unbalanced rivalries. So many schools that think they are rivals with another team that really don’t care about the other one.
