I feel like in order to replace the aging boomer UH fans in the next decade, we have to introduce the game of football to the minorities or international students as soon as they get to campus since Caucasians make up less than 30% of the current UH student body.
I’m a minority myself but since I played football from middle school to high school, it was easy for me to understand the college football environment.
Many of the local high school students never had the Friday Night Lights or Remember The Titans type of culture growing up in Houston the past 20 years so they don’t bother to get involved at the college level unless you went to a Katy, The Woodlands, North Shore etc type of high school.
I know UH does the women’s chalk talk every August to introduce women to the game of football but can we start something similar to the international or minority students?
Its about us attracting high quality high ROI students that WANT to create a LIFELONG connection with your alma mater, while attending and long after you graduate.
You can be an 8th generation White American and be considered a low ROI student or you can be a 1st generation xyz- American, of any race/ancestry, and be a HIGH ROI student.
UT just attracts more of those type of students than UH but both Universities have more similarities than many would believe.
Don’t worry, I’m not white but when I show my license or passport to people outside of Texas to prove that I was born and raised in Texas, they all assume I am lying or have forged papers.
I got questioned by immigration officers in the UK that I don’t look like the stereotypical Texan or have the accent.
I would think a lot comes from whether their parents watched football too. ie. sit with your dad and play or watch football to build interest. While they may attend a Texas HS, they may have parents that did not grow up on American football.
I grew up in a household that did not watch much football or talk about it, and I went to only one game in HS. Did not get pulled into it until I had friends in college that we started going. (Also being able to walk to the stadium in college helped)
TCU also has a student body that has been exposed to the Friday Nights Lights high school culture when they went to high school.
They most likely went to decent income suburb schools and had parents that took them to college games.
Can’t say the same for the majority of UH students outside of the ones who went to Katy, North Shore, Woodlands, etc.
My high school football experience was just like UH, the only people in the stands were family of players, family of band members, or family of the spirit squads like cheer or dance.
We barely had 600 people in the stands and my school was the highest classification of 5A in the mid 2000s.
Question for those pushing the UH needs to accept more traditional students:
Is this in addition to current students and growing the size of the university or bring in more traditional students and not accept as many of the part time or non-traditional students?
Not sure that any TCU reference changes anything about my statement of HS not impacting my desire to be a football fan. Just because someone goes to HS in Texas does not mean they will be a football fan without additional influences. I still stand by my reply to Law in regards to simply being in Texas for HS does not mean they will be football fans. My comment was about the HS part, not college.
Also reference TCU now is no way relevant to my experience at TCU as an undergrad.
You added this statement after I was typing my reply. Also pretty far off in regards to the TCU experience. But that is for another story thread on both history of TCU student body and some of the current make up.
I think I know your point of view on it, so this really doesn’t answer the question since you are not pushing the more traditional student version of the student body. I am curious as to how they want to handle the situation as it could have a different impact depending on their solution.
Well…our main campus accepts an disappointing low % of traditional students, compared to EVERY SINGLE Power 4 school.
This is despite the University making great strides, and investments, to BE A Traditional University.
There is NO way our leaders would have pushed so hard, and agreed to pay so much money, to join a Power Conference IF our culture was to remain a Commuter School.
I say…give the Commuter Students and the main Campus exactly what they both want.
The students that have ZERO intention of giving anything back to the University during their days at UH and after (support of athletics/arts/lectures/festivals, involvement in social groups, intramurals, mentoring current students , donations, wearing school gear even, etc…filter those students to the “leave the second your class ends” UH satellite campuses.
They STILL get a UH degree but they don’t have to contribute anything beyond that whereas the UH Main campus can feed off the synergy of the Traditional students that DO!
Follow up questions:
A) So the other campuses need to expand and become world class engineering schools and add all the majors that UH has, or are these students not worthy of getting a good degree in a major they want? I know many very good engineers that are not college football/sports fans should they not be allowed a top quality education because of that?
B) So by getting rid of the other students to the satellite campuses, main campus would probably drop by 50% in size. Is that good?
I have another question that has been discussed but not answered in the past, but I will add that later.
It they ever put me in charge of admissions to UH, I would create a checklist below for prospective students before academics and test score considerations.
Did you play high school football?
Do you play Madden, watch NFL, or college football?
Are you involved in fantasy football or wagering on football?
If you didn’t play football growing up, were you involved in football?
Do you know traditions such as homecoming, tailgating, or understand the game itself?
Did your parents take you to college football games?
Then if they get at least 3 out of 6, then they go into the next step where we evaluate their academics and test scores.
