Really, before we do any of this, we gotta fix the really big issues that are present. It won’t matter how good the gameday experience is if our ticketing site is broken, our ticket scanners don’t work, our vendors can’t process a card payment in a timely fashion, and half our concession stands are closed.
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Thats an excuse. Louisville, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Memphis fill their stadiums up.
Part of it is simply, Houston.
Houston isn’t a “go-to” city. It’s a great city. Economy is great, food is great, etc., but it isn’t a destination city. People don’t flock to Houston for anything. Why would they? It doesn’t have South Beach. It doesn’t have mountains, ocean, etc… Doesn’t have great weather year round. It isn’t a destination.
Making Houston a destination school will need the upgrades in progress, as well as something for student life. Ole Miss is famous for tailgating at the Grove. You can go to a Miami game after spending a day on the beach, or before a night at the clubs. Houston doesn’t have anything to draw people in, so we’re looking pretty much at Houstonians.
Then, you’re right back to how we beat out the Rockets, Stros, texans, people leaving for hunting weekends, A&M, Texas, etc., every weekend. We’re fighting against generations of people leaving town for the weekend for entertainment, and we’ve been trying to do it from a G5 conference.
Big XII should certainly help. That will get relevant teams and games on campus, but I think we still need to look at being small but vocal. Let’s fill a 40k seat stadium, and make it loud.
As of right now, roughly 7 British Premier League stadiums exceed 40k capacity. Chelsea (Stamford Bridge) seats 40,267. We can make an advantage without filling 60-80k, expanding, etc., and I would much rather be full and noisy than look like the Rose Bowl the last few weeks.
So, my opinion, lock in on 40k, don’t worry about expansion, have to improve concourse options (let Hilton run the thing), make tailgating a can’t miss event (live music, cook-off competition, etc), offer buses from different areas to get you to the game and home, family packs on tickets (buy 2 games, if we win either of those games, get an additional ticket to a future game, etc.).
So, essentially, nothing different than y’all have already mentioned, but also hire Coach Prime, and bring the CoT back on campus. Pretty sure the CoT is going to be like the billy goat at Wrigley, or the Curse of the Bambino.
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Once again I’m talking about why giving away tickets wont work.
Only way to fill the stadium going forward would need to bring in naked women
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Louisville and Memphis aren’t comps for Houston. They’re smaller cities, and don’t have NFL or MLB teams competing for sports attention for the first two months of the college football season. Pitt’s stadium is pretty consistently over 1/3 empty unless they’re great, and per my ACC sources that’s with some substantial inflation. Cincy is the only real comp on that list.
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And we have filled up the stadium when we’re winning and have top opponents in. That buzz is how Houston works.
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Just win baby!
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Actually UH is becoming more of one of the go to schools which I heard from my area and the people I know. Pecking order among public universities is UT,A&M then UH or Tech or Tx st. Which actually more even with tech now as number 3 but tech is so far away. We had the 38000 applications or more recently which suggests this. We moved up bc all the new improvements in the school. Baylor and Tcu aren’t bc too expensive so they have a more select group. UH does need to do better at recruiting out of town kids to live on campus and making it a thing to support athletics. Lsu and A&M do that on day one and we need to also. We’re gonna have to see what happens once fully in the big12 which helps a lot with branding. It already has shown up in the number of applicants.
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Set aside 100 or 1,000 tickets (pick a number) for selected games and work with the local independent school districts on a give away. Maybe which district can show the most football spirit and get local media coverage. Try and get local celebrities to judge the excitement.
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Set aside a # of tickets and let ISD school administrators decide who to distribute the tickets to.
Working with the ISD’s creates goodwill and excitement for the program.
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Set aside # of tickets for a community-based organization each game to give to their staff and the population they serve.
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Have a raffle, similar to the Share2Care 50/50 Raffle at the Astros games. Sell raffle tickets before and during the game and in the 4th quarter announce the winning raffle number. The winner gets half the amount and the remaining amount goes to either a charity or to help build the football ops facility.
Yes this the way I think. Though would consider middle school too if you can work out the logistics.
All l know is that we have a great business school and in business there is always a way to figure this out. Pez again needs to be constantly thinking out of box for how to get 10k extra in somehow. There is a way.
Here’s an idea: set up a ticketing system similar for student tickets, and give access to every honor student at a public high school within 10 miles of UH, as well as everyone on the Dean’s List or in the Honors College at HCC, Lone Star, or San Jac. Treat it as marketing; a little “hey, here’s a little sneak peek at your life as a coog. this could be you in a year or two. maybe take a campus tour while you’re at it!” I doubt the uptake would be huge, but it would be a nice gesture for some students that we really want to get on campus anyway.
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Is there another major college town with FIVE D1 Football programs like in the Greater Houston area ? Just wondering out loud
I agree with your overall point, but Miami (fans) are worse than Houston, except when they’re winning. They’ve had probably the most dominant teams in CFB along with natty’s in their history and still won’t show up unless they’re winning
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Four by my count, but the Research Triangle in NC has Duke, UNC, NC State, and NC Central.
EDIT: DC has Maryland, Navy, Towson, Georgetown, and Howard.
What are we going to call it?..…Cougars Gone Wild
People can just go on the internet for naked women if they want it that bad.
No need for it at the game.
People who just really like to watch a sport at the stadium will show up no matter who’s playing or what the home team’s record is. To consistently fill a stadium beyond that small group, you have to win consistently.
90 years ago if Army and Harvard played at Yankee Stadium the place would be packed, and most would not be West Point or Harvard grads, either.
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This weekend there is a concert at halftime mike wall and another guy.
I’m gonna email pez. There is a way to get this done we just need to brainstorm like we’re doing and figure it out. This is a way and although we failed in the past, we’re now big 12 so it’s a new dynamic which helps us and things can be different this time. The aac was hard to sell which I agree but big12 games or knowing we’re big12 is the game changer.