ElViento: First of all, I’m going to be out of town until July 4, but I’ll leave y’all in the capable hands of Bobb-o and SarCoog.
As the title of this blog entry would suggest, I have five modest, relatively cheap proposals which I feel would increase the overall quality of the UH men’s basketball program. (And no, none of them are “Fire Penders!”. If you want to go there, that’s an entirely different ball of wax. I lose everybody already? Alright, let’s move on.) I don’t claim that all or any of these are practical, but I think they’re all good ideas. Without further ado,
1. The Houston Roundball Classic…We play a bunch of lousy SWAC teams every year for guarantee wins. Instead of playing those as regular old home games that nobody pays attention to (UH students, UH alums, casual Houston fans all included), why not institute a 4-team, 2-day tournament? Replace Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State on the schedule with a tourney, which, on one half of the bracket, features UH vs. Rice, on the other, Houston Baptist vs. Texas Southern. (To ensure at least one day’s worth of semi-close contests.) Winners and losers each face off the next day. You could rotate all semi-worthy Houston basketball venues; Hofheinz, Tudor, etc. It wouldn’t sell out Toyota Center or anything, but it’ll do more to attract local attention than the above-mentioned SWAC opponents do. If you wanna get really crazy, see if the NCAA will let you hold the tournament at a nice, outdoor court. SportsCenter would at least show the highlights.
2. Schedule tougher…The RPI ramifications of this are obvious, but it’s time to schedule some “name” teams. Even if you have to give up the occasional two-for-one, get some home games with teams people know. Keep playing Arizona every year. If we can consistently get a home-and-home with them (assuming that whole face-stepping thing didn’t end that relationship), we can get some other name teams. Call up Coach Cal, set up a home-and-home with Kentucky. While I like having the majority of the non-conference schedule at home, because it means I get to see a lot of games for free, the average UH student and casual Houston fan will respond much better to six non-conf. home games, when four of them are teams they’ve heard of, than they will to ten non-conf home games, when maybe one of them is a team they’ve heard of.
3. T-Shirts for Students…Students love free stuff, especially T-shirts. (Which is funny, because most UH students already have a bajillion free T-shirts.) Anyway, having run around the UH campus in the past, telling people, “There’s a basketball game tonight!”, you’d be shocked how many students immediately ask, “Are they giving away anything?” or “Are there going to be free shirts?” Give away shirts, raffle off an iPod or something. Students love free stuff, and right now, we’re doing very little to attract them to basketball games. You know, other than the whole “it’s free division 1 basketball” thing.
4. Improve concessions quality…I realize that we probably have some absurd contract with Aramark that we can’t get out of, but it would do wonders to institute any sort of better, cheaper method of concessions. Even doing “dollar hot dog nights” for students, or something similar, would bring out fans. If people are bigger football fans than basketball, at least attract them with something football doesn’t have: affordable concessions.
SarCoog: They did dollar hot dog night last season, but you had to buy a $5 soda with it… defeating the fucking purpose of the promotion in the first place. But I’ve interrupted too much already, back to EV.
5. Midnight Madness…If I could pick one thing off the list for UH to actually do, it would be #2. But if I could pick two things, this would be the second. It’s absurd that Houston doesn’t put on one of these, like most big-time programs do. It’s a simple concept: on the stroke of midnight, the first day that your program is allowed to practice during the school year, you open up the basketball arena to the fans, for free. You raffle off some prizes, have some music, have a basic scrimmage, have your best athletes thrown down in a mini-drunk contest, etc. Advertise that all over school for a couple weeks in advance, give out some sweet black-with-red-lettering “Cougar Midnight Madness” shirts, and tell me that the students wouldn’t come out. (Okay, it’s entirely possible that they wouldn’t. But you’ve gotta at least try, right?)
sounds like good ideas….. the whole students-not-showing-up thing is baffling to me….. maybe it needs to be marketed less as a basketball game and more as an event…. the “place” to be that evening…..
The student attendance was good for ECU and UTEP… which aren’t necessarily big draws. So the whole student attendance thing can be done.
Really the concern should be whether we can get alumni/non-UH alum sports fans out there. Honestly I don’t see it. But I hope I’m wrong.
-sar
gotcha…. thats a shame……. but honestly… its no real big secret…. go 12-2 13-1…. and amazingly the fans will start showing up… amazing! lol
If UH could pull off something even remotely similar to this for Midnight Madness we’d be set for a some sweet pre-season hype! And hopefully that’d result in increased attendance!
Check it!
http://tubbysmith.com/start.html
Throw it on a website, link it to the chronicle, or some other well know website (cough, yours, cough) and we’ll see it blow up!
I already wanna go!
Go Coogs!
Amir ‘08
I wonder whether playing 5pm midweek games wouldn’t help us out. A lot of our working alumni fans are able to knock off 20 minutes early to hop over from downtown, and students will still be on campus.
Instead of convincing people to come back to campus once they’ve gone home, just let them roll on over before hittin the house.
Of course, this is more of a fan retention idea. Scheduling tougher will attract new fans, not just make it easy for built-in fans to go. You all noticed that most students at the Memphis game had never been to any other basketball game before – that’s the kind that tougher scheduling will attract.
But if its an early game, they can come back more easily, and ESPN will have more slots available to show it.
Its the overall sports marketing program that has been stuck in a ditch since 1984. I swear there must be aggies in charge of that dept. Basketball attendance is just one of the problems, but all sports suffer from the same affliction – nobody cares.
I went to the valley once and stopped by this cafe, this 50 year old guy in a wheel chair was the owner, watching the braves, and the whole place was covered in braves. I asked if he was from A-town, negative. Relatives there, no. Have you ever been there – no, but it is his lifelong dream to go. Why then was he such a fan – TV, the braves channel, TNT, everyday. Thats why TV does.
So why can’t the Coogs get more TV? CSTV, satelite channel 952, sucks harder than a $10 crack whore. Nobody gets it. What about KUHF? Every UH sport, all season, for free. Now probably KUHF would not pay royalties, but I can’t believe we get that much from CSTV. But it would bulid loyalty and a huge fan following from the whole city.
And also get more Coog Gear into Walmart and Valeros, just like the horns and aggies. I got to go all the way to Calhoun to get a cap? That makes me less loyal. How hard is that to figure out?
Sports marketing has little or nothing to do with those effects. Sports marketing has done what it can, considering the rest of the university (until now) has said “Athletics, you get this block of land, and this chunk of cash, now go do your thing. Good luck!” That’s changing, and your perception of the marketing department will soon change with it.
The TV deal is a result of conference affiliation. We maybe could get a local TV deal, but it would have to be subservient to the CSTV (and therefore CBS) arrangement, because that’s how contracts work. Get in another conference or play teams with better TV deals in nonconference games, and we’ll be on other channels more.
Walmart and Valero and Academy and any other store you want to name all depend on demand. People hardly buy stuff from Cougar Authentic and the College Store (UH student athletes are the biggest customers at Cougar Authentic, by a lot), so why should other stores carry them? I know, we core fans want stuff, but we only have so much money and so many trips to those stores. Signing a petition is a nice gesture, but stores aren’t the government. The only vote that matters is dollars, and if dollars aren’t being paid for what is available now, the choice won’t be made available. Sell out of everything at current sources on campus, and other stores will notice and stock stuff.
But don’t blame athletics marketing for that. They have nothing to do with it.
They need to tear down those ghetto plywood “suites” if they want more alums to attend.
Who’s dumb idea was it to build those things anyway?
Back in the day, when you got up to get a beer, you could still watch the game.
Honestly, I have no idea about the boxes.
I think that may be the worst idea in all of UH athletics history. Or at least its up there with charging PSL’s in the late 70’s for tickets at the Dome, the Kim Helton/Clyde Drexler hires and letting Vince Jarrett run the golf program into the ground.
-sar
I would love to have a game against UH. As the original poster said, it would be nice to see all the local teams play each other. We are just recently D1 again, and I cannot imagine that UH would have a hard time beating us (if that was a concern), and it seems that such an event would get a decent turnout.