Idea: Reunion Weekends

If this idea already exists, please let us know

There are 160,000 plus alumni living in the Houston area. Spread that out to Texas and you have even more!

But there is an issue; How come we can’t sell out TDECU? Student tickets are limited and are available for purchase on Gameday (slow process for walkups too). And there might not be enough interest for someone to come out to a game by themselves/their spouse or family.

This brings an idea: Reunion weekends. Many students/young alums would say that they went to games because they got to sit with their fellow students, which created a bit of an atmosphere for them! So why not apply that to alumni?

A reunion weekend would be as follows: There are five home games at TDECU (and one at NRG). Take out the sections that aren’t sold as much, and dedicate each section to a graduating class in intervals of five or ten years!

Homecoming can be reserved for reunions of 10 (bronze), 25 (silver), and 50 (gold) class reunions. Other games can vary for years such as five (no longer young alumni), 15, 20, 30, 35, 45, 55, and others for specific years.

This could potentially generate interests for members of a class to come back, sit, and watch a game all together. They can engage in traditions that they did in THEIR time, and meet up with each other during a specified time.

Imagine a scenario where there are there people, A, B, C, and D. They were all best friends while at UH, and currently live all over the country.

A is much into UH sports, B is moderately into sports, and C, not so much. They all hear of their class reunion occurring at the game versus Cincy and decide to go. They don’t have a way of contacting D, but D is such a die-hard fan that they know D is going to be there. At the same time, all four of these students took a difficult core Chemistry class with other peers, and they’re probably going to show up there as well. So while they watch the Coogs play, they can discuss how much they wanted to bash their head while taking Chemistry.

Any discussion on this? Does this idea sound good to y’all? Let us know! We plan on proposing this idea to Marketing and UHAA soon.

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We have a small base of diehard fans, but winning will solve that in any UH sport. I will guarantee you that if the Coog women fielded a really good team they would get support also. I have supported and loved UH since 1962 and can tell you that winning, especially big games, brings our fans out of the closet…
But I am for anything that might improve our attendance…

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Many, many ex-students never graduated but are considered alumni anyway. Many, many likely don’t feel any real attachment to UH, especially if they were part-time commuters (this describes me but I made it a point to be involved on campus). A better measure, I think, would be the number of graduates in the Houston area. I’m sure the school has that information and hopefully they are trying to get everyone else with a UH sheepskin as fired up as we are.

WAIT!!! Don’t click reply yet and rip me! I know there are many loyal coog fans who didn’t graduate. We love you and value you and you’re coogs too. In fact, there are many loyal coog fans who never went to college. For the City!!

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Many of those who never graduated from UH actually remain Coog fans, but I agree with your point. So many either left for other schools or dropped off the map…and many, or maybe most, never cared about sports to begin with…
That’s what being a commuter school is about. But the University has made great strides for making the University of Houston a school people want to attend and graduate from. Getting folks who go to UH for the academics is perhaps the greatest achievement in school history…and that folks, is happening before our very eyes…

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Renu Khator has been absolutely phenomenal! I don’t know who was in charge when she was hired but they picked a good one!

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How small die-hard fans… I would say non students or guests… 5k ??

I think there are a lot of things like this that could be done - Alumni Association doesn’t seem to do much in creating an interest for good ideas such as this. One thing I would do is have a parents day for current students that would include professors telling/showing parents about what their kids are studying and then going to a game (could certainly be better than what I described).

So basically this idea came from the guy who ran our group who before UH, was at a service academy. They had reunion weekends. Parents weekend was a thing, where newly finished basics would be able to go out into town after the first football game. The night before that, parents got to meet with professors, etc. Many people would go to these reunion weekends because they got to meet with their classmates every five or ten years, and actually bring back old traditions (he said it varied every weekend and that it was hilarious)

UH currently does something like that called “family weekend”. However, it doesn’t seem advertised as much. We’ll bring it up with UHAA + UH Marketing and see what they think.

NEVER ATTENDED UH BUT LATCHED ONTO THEM IN THE 60’S AND NEVER SWAYED.LOVE THEM COOGS

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Give that man a beer. You’ve earned a cold one of your choice from me if we cross paths at a home game.