The next four home games have available seats in the student section. Buy em up if you want to sit there and take the students seats!

Cougar Basketball
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Yeah show me the pics of the consistently jam-packed student sections at Pitt, Miami, Georgia Tech, USC and UCLA. I’m sure they never have a problem with attendance, right?

I think some of y’all get hung up thinking that we can magically and instantaneously reverse 3 decades of utter apathy and become Duke or Kentucky or Kansas in the blink of an eye. We’re essentially building this program from scratch and that includes fan support. We’ve made progress since the last years of Hofheinz. We still got a ways to go. Keep winning and building and we’ll get there. Our students are fine. They show up to big games. That’s a start. Let’s build from that.

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I attended UH from 2017-2021 and I think part of the problem is the type of student we let in. A good chunk of the kids we admit just don’t care about sports. Most of the students in the category only attended UH because the attended a local community college for a year or two then transferred to UH to finish up their degree, another reason is that UH offered the best financial aid package. News flash, the international students or students who parents grew up in another country know what basketball and football is, what y’all don’t understand is that they have the pressure of their parents and family to get a degree with a high GPA and land a great job. These type of students are hyper focused on the school work.
We’ve been playing at the level of a blue blood the past several seasons but we don’t have that blue blood reputation. Only true college basketball fans know how good UH basketball has been the past several seasons. The students that we admitted haven’t gone all through out middle school and high school with UH teams with national cache, that type of thing builds slowly. Give it 5 more years at this level and you’ll see way more students who are invested. The move to the Big 12 will definitely help!

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Silvercoog nailed it.

I’m sure someone in admissions knows the % of international students but let me share this story.

My dad attended UH.He moved here from out of state and it was a college option for a non traditional student. He had just served his time for the Vietnam War and was working and married and about to start a family.

He would say that the University of Houston accepted so many international students…that there was a running joke that the H in UH stood for Hanoi.

He passed on ZERO UH traditions to me. I learned the traditions all on my own by living on campus, joing the Greek system, and attending games during and after graduating .

When UH was 25 or 50 years old, I can understand needing to attract international students and community College transfers to build your University…I do BUT…we aren’t at that stage of our growth cycle anymore. We are an established 100 year old public University in the State of Texas…we don’t need to go the mail order diploma route anymore. Funnel those low ROI students to our satellite campuses.

They still get the American education but we maximize our investment by the type of students we send to the main campus

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While I was there athletics was generally a afterthought for like 85% of the students. I can recall several times several different professors talking about the university’s athletics in a negative way, whether it was about parking, money or other things. My point is that type of attitude towards athletics is being feed to students who were new transfers and may of considered attending a game at some point.

When it comes to a majority of students they feel like they aren’t getting the quality education that they are paying ~6K in tuition and fees ( not including a housing and food) per semester. For years the school was pulling money from other places and putting it towards athletics only reinforcing how students felt.
It sucks paying 600 a semester for parking and not being able to park in the lot that you paid for because of game day and now have look for parking for 45 minutes

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Looking at my dad’s Houstonian yearbooks from the mid 60’s, you could see the school spirit was great.

When I was there in the mid 90’s, it was all but dead.

It’s better today than when I was there, but we still have some of work to do.

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Enrollment stats for Fall 2021:

African American: 5034 = 10.7% Up ~500 from 2019
Asian American: 10348 = 22.0% Up ~600 from 2019
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 29 = .06% Down ~7 from 2019
Hispanic: 15654 = 33.2% Up ~700 from 2019
International: 3619 = 7.7% Up ~200 from 2019
Multiracial: 1407 = 2.9% Up ~40 from 2019
Native American: 58 = 0.12% Down 9 from 2019
White: 10182 = 21.6% Down ~800 from 2019
Unknown: 700 = 1.4% Down ~300 from 2019

Total: 47031, up 900 from 2019, down 59 from 2020.

Also, something about that thread makes it feel like they don’t like being called out… A week or two ago a thread was posted on ‘what could get you interested’ and there was nowhere near the pessimism that existed.

And to tack on to @UH1927 and @silvercoog

Since 2018, we have had more freshman applicants than transfer applicants. A change is happening. Now time to market it.

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Speaking of marketing, the ticket marketing is absolutely garbage and it’s pitiful how are you only going to have tiny signs along walkways to showcase the schedule and half the time the signs are knocked down

The process to get tickets needs to be completely overhauled. Whoever made it needs to be fired and whoever notified students about instructions on how to get tickets also needs to be fired.
It was my second year on campus and the only way I knew how to get tickets was because of CV3s post with instructions on Reddit and that was after I attended every game my freshman year

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Ahahahahah I remember writing that post and the person that took over the accounts reposting that. It was hilarious seeing the issue still go on.

Did you ever join the GroupMe?

Also in the end, it is STILL garbage. In 2018 (junior year) it was so easy to get, and tickets for basketball sold out in just minutes. People selling tickets was a huge problem. You walked up to the ticket booth any given game for Football? You were not turned away and were handed a ticket after you showed your student ID. Now, it’s just bad. Accounts and verification everywhere.

There is a simpler process.

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I was a first generation minority college student at UH during the Sumlin/Keenum years and we had no problems filling the student section for football.

I noticed the difference between the students of the Sumlin/Keenum years and students of the Sampson years right now is that a lot of the minority student organizations/groups during the Sumlin years went out of their way to attend the football games with tailgates and pre-game events.

I was involved in a minority student organization and we tailgated before every football game even during the 5-7 2010 season. We co-hosted with other minority student groups to create a joint tailgate which boosted the student attendance.

Basketball was only packed when Memphis came into town with Calipari with our students hoping to watch an upset.

Are the minority/international students getting involved with tailgates or pre-game events for basketball/football since 2017?
If not, then it would be beneficial for those student groups to go back to doing pre-game tailgates and events.

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It goes both ways on the alums too.

I have met a number of UH alums who do not encourage their son/daughters to attend UH once they got to their high school years.

I have also met a number of alums that I graduated with in the past 10 years who never supported UH but support their parents/grandparents alma mater.

These were the ones who moved to Houston from out of state due to their parents’ job transfer or new career opportunities after the 2007 recession and only enrolled at UH due to location and convenience.

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Sooo you’re blaming lackluster student attendance on international students who make up less than 8% of the student population? Big yikes.

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My understanding is that International Students, due to the high fees they pay, are some of the highest ROI students you can get. Their $$$ is very attractive to universities. Not just UH, but this is common at all universities across the country (e.g., Harvard has 24% international students).

Not to mention that International Students are some of the best students in my experience. They tend have much more incentive to do well than American students do.

Our University would be misguided if we start directing admissions based on how well students will attend football and basketball games.

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Absolutely. It’s a bad idea. Best thing to do is market and the culture will form.

We still have to be the University where people can come and do what they want instead of have an expectation of being a ‘true Coog’. Be a ‘you Coog’

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No…i was answering the previous post that mentioned many of our students do not understand or have a connection to American sports. Add that to older non traditional students, ones that commute from the far suburbs , and ones who are embarrassed to go to UH and you’ll start to understand why 75% of the type is students we admit could care less about supporting their university, in any capacity.

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Yes, ROI from an initial profitability standpoint but low ROI in what they guess back to the University over their lifetime.

I’m going to assume most of those students have little to no involvement as a student, are detached as an alum, rarely donate, and definitely do not leave anything towards the endowment in their wills.

That is the type of ROI I am talking about.

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You want more students to go to games, go back to just scanning their ID’s. The whole reserving tickets days in advance maybe makes since for football because there’s only one game a week but its a disaster for basketball. It prevents people from being able to go last minute or from being able to invite people to go with them last minute.

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Long post, sorry in advance i promise there’s a point.

I attended between 2014-2017. I use to attend another university of which shall not be named while an ex girlfriend of mine attended UH during the 2011-2014. Campus looked a lot different back then and i use to visit her often and sit in her classes. It was night and day from the time i was there to when she was there.

During the time we were breaking up she joined a big sorority on campus and attended all the games and we would just keep in touch with each other periodically. She went on to have a full college experience and be supportive of UH. Before i attended i was told in highschool by several teachers to not go to UH because it was a bad school. So much so that a parent of one of my classmates said she was glad her son wasn’t going to UH because UTEP was a far superior and prestigious school, so i didn’t apply to UH at all and had assumptions of it from other people from the start. My ex would constantly tell me how big UH was going to get and how many strides it was making with tier 1 and sports. I didn’t realize until i did research of my own.

After being financially crippled by the university i attended i went to community college and then transferred to UH. It made me appreciate UH alot more because of how much i struggled transferring. My welcome day was one day and i didn’t really understand it. My first day there i had no idea when sporting events took place or where. I loved sports and had no clue when anything was going on on campus. I was on campus late one night and i heard TDECU roaring and that’s when i realized they were playing. I invited a friend i had just met in a orgo lab and my cousin and they invited their friends and we went. It was a pain not being able to take your backpack and having to take it back to the car and then walk all the way back. But going in was simple as showing your S-ID unless you forgot it (which i did and a couple of friends did too occasionally)

After i had gotten use to it and joined an organization by accident i finally felt i was in college. Before, i felt like i was just going to UH and taking classes and going home. Most of the professors i had hated that there were sports and some would even cancel class because of parking so there was no incentive to going to campus. The only incentive to going was to hang out with friends and go meet girls. I didn’t know the football schedule until i noticed the signs they would put betweent PGH and MD Library about the games but back then looking back at it was much easier to get in to the games. I had to do the student thing online on UH cougars one year and it wasn’t particularly hard but annoying. I found coogfans because i was googling a forum for UH and this popped up. I lurked for 3 months before i made an account and ever since then this and Twitter is where I get most of my information. Going to basketball games was a hole different animal because no one would go so it was hard to say let’s go to the game and there’s 2 people there.

My cousin and friend never got into the sports on campus so they graduated and looked fondly on it but didn’t feel like sports were a critical part of their time there. They have the logo on their cars but that’s about it. I got my cousin to buy season tickets 2 years in a row and she stopped because it was hard for her to make the games because of game times and other obligations. I started dating my current girlfriend my last semester there and she had attended 3 games prior to meeting me including that Louisville game. She later picked up a passion for it because of me and always wanting to go to games.

Here’s the point. 1 person went out and joined organizations and actively wanted a college experience

1 person was only studying and stumbled on it by chance because he liked sports and he wanted to give it a chance so he actively went to football and basketball.

1 person liked it because they had prior experience and their boyfriend liked sports so it was a bonding thing

2 people never got into it and therefore never got their partners into it.

UH does absolutely nothing to market these games. The minimum that they do is not enough to engage students unless they’re actively looking for that. Little 1x1 Signs on campus aren’t enough. It takes a village and all professors have to do their part. The rec could easily say go to the game and get a free shirt on your next visit. The UC could say sign up for the game and go and you’ll get 5 cougar bucks. I bet you that’s a lot cheaper than a shirt. The billboards around Houston use to highlight the teams. I mean the Texans suck right now and the rockets were sucking also. Where are these fans getting their fix? They’re not. They’re at home watching teams from other states and supporting them because they do a better job at marketing their brand. It’s not an international thing or a student thing it’s a university thing that UH has not invested money into.

The other day i saw UCLA had a undie run. Why are we not marketing this on campus? Because there’s no common goal and UH for some strange reason has a hard time letting people know of events on campus.
Do some of you remember when we use to have big artist on campus performing during HOCO? No. Has there been performances on campus since 2017? Who knows. The last good concert there was Ferg. UH could fix all this by sending out a text to everyone enrolled part time or full time stating game and time. (make it simple) and then sending link to tickets.

If they really wanted to they could make an app with nothing but upcoming events and parties for students that can be added by students and during orientation show them and get them to make an athletics account and sign up. It’s not hard UH and as silver said
Everyone in on campus marketing needs to be fired. 6 years of mediocrity is to long.

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When I was in school 08-'11 my friends would bring their expired IDs and get in for free because nobody was worried about all the seats being filled in the student section… We’re trending in the right direction these days but, I agree, we can probably just let students in by scanning their IDs as opposed to forcing them to pickup tickets prior to gameday.

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These apps sound like some good senior design projects for Comp Sci/EE students.

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My daughter was down to Ole Miss, UH and Arizona….Chose Arizona because they offered her almost a full academic ride……

She just got home a couple of days ago and informed us she will finish the year but will be transferring to UH…. Did not like the prevalent drug use( hard drugs, not just pot) around her and the fact that her roommate was a giant “ hoe bag”……

She will be at the Texas State game with me….very thankful she took it upon herself to make the change.

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