Once again UH has crushed us with local media/marketing. The press release yesterday and the Chronicle article today talking about them scheduling up and playing more P5 opponents as well as eliminating games against FCS school has gotten huge play and fits right into the narrative they are pushing that they should be P5. We can debate whether or not it is working for them or not, but I would argue that they have at least positioned themselves as one of the most-ready G5 programs if and when someone does get moved up. At some point, after years and years of them saying it and the local media repeating it, perception becomes reality.

The genius of this recent marketing ploy is that they generated a bunch of positive publicity on very little actual news. So they are going to stop playing FCS teams- great. Other than out of necessity this year (and PVAM next year which I don't understand) we have basically had this stance for 6-7 years. They also played up their future P5 opponents and said they are looking for a non-conference balance of 2 P5 games and 2 G5 games- which is exactly what we are striving for I believe. Our future schedule includes games versus Stanford, USC, Baylor, Wake Forest, and Boise State. I guess it's not our style, but we could have put out effectively the same message as they did, but we didn't and now there is another occasion where UH gets treated as the only college option in town- and certainly the only one with higher aspirations.

I know this does not bother some of you, but it appears to me that UH is winning or has won in the race to be Houston's college team. I know this is true for the Chronicle. I'm not in Houston so I don't know about sports talk radio. And before the inevitable response about UT and A&M (and LSU, etc) being Houston's college team- I know and I am talking about local teams only that are fighting for scarce print and air time. I do believe that will be a factor if there is another move to add a team from Houston to a P5 (admittedly a big "if" but not totally impossible)

Ca. 100 years ago:
Appoint a double Ph.D. as your President on the recommendation of Woodrow Wilson.
Send him on a tour of Europe's leading universities.

Appoint James Baker Sr. to your Board of Trustees.
Appoint Julian Huxley to your faculty.

Today:
Football!

The only people I've met in Houston who care about UH are either alums, one of the high number that attended and didn't graduate, or people who never went to college. They are just as irrelevant as Rice but they are the large public school that shares a name with our city so they will get more air time. Before the football season the local news website had A&M and UT football info and nothing on Rice and UH. It annoys me far more when the media repeats their tier 1 BS.

(09-17-2015 12:17 PM)JSA Wrote:  Ca. 100 years ago:
Appoint a double Ph.D. as your President on the recommendation of Woodrow Wilson.
Send him on a tour of Europe's leading universities.

Appoint James Baker Sr. to your Board of Trustees.
Appoint Julian Huxley to your faculty.

Today:
Football!

um, what? I didn't say anything about compromising our academic mission, which would be a non-starter for all of us. My comment was solely about PR/ marketing.

unless I misunderstood your response, which is highly possible

(09-17-2015 12:25 PM)Middle Ages Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 12:17 PM)JSA Wrote:  Ca. 100 years ago:
Appoint a double Ph.D. as your President on the recommendation of Woodrow Wilson.
Send him on a tour of Europe's leading universities.

Appoint James Baker Sr. to your Board of Trustees.
Appoint Julian Huxley to your faculty.

Today:
Football!

um, what? I didn't say anything about compromising our academic mission, which would be a non-starter for all of us. My comment was solely about PR/ marketing.

unless I misunderstood your response, which is highly possible

I just realized that's how it sounded, which isn't what I meant.
I was pointing out our history vs. the approach being taken by so many other schools today.

I definitely think we can re-vitalize athletics without compromising our mission.

(09-17-2015 12:24 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  The only people I've met in Houston who care about UH are either alums, one of the high number that attended and didn't graduate, or people who never went to college. They are just as irrelevant as Rice but they are the large public school that shares a name with our city so they will get more air time. Before the football season the local news website had A&M and UT football info and nothing on Rice and UH. It annoys me far more when the media repeats their tier 1 BS.

They are executing their stated strategy to become Houston's football team, and push into a P5 conference such as the Big 12. It also appears to be well-funded.

Their mission is to reverse that irrelevance, and it appears they are succeeding. They even have the schedule to accomplish some of our stated football goals; signature wins, conference championships, and Top 25 finishes.

The local media-newspaper, radio and TV-report first on pro teams esp. Texans and then Texas and A&M. UH and Rice lag far behind. So UH wants more P5 teams to come to play at UH, it does not necessarily make it happen. Most P5s will give a game at their own home but are reluctant to have to give an away game to a G5. Most P5s sell more season tickets than UH could ever sell because their stadium seats only 40K. They can say they do not want to play a FCS team but often one gets scheduled anyway to fill a home date that would not otherwise be filled.

Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Second was a focus on the G5 games to be regional, like North Texas, UTSA, and the current games scheduled with Texas State.

It is not too different from the Rice schedules, as long as Houston can find home and home deals with P5 programs.

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Second was a focus on the G5 games to be regional, like North Texas, UTSA, and the current games scheduled with Texas State.

It is not too different from the Rice schedules, as long as Houston can find home and home deals with P5 programs.

I would probably agree with most of what is said here. UH doesn't really have "T-shirt fans" or "Walmart fans" (make your joke about UH alums shopping at Walmart) and maybe they never will, but as was mentioned they are a large public school with a large amount of alumni, so they don't need to convince non-alumni to meet their immediate attendance goals. Someone mentioned that the stadium holds 40k and P5's want to see more attendance than that, that's true, mostly (with some exceptions like WSU, but they are an exception that proves the rule). UH can expand the stadium to 60k, if they can somehow consistently show that they can fill 40k. That was a requirement in the plans of the new stadium, but it also didn't make sense to have a stadium that would always be 1/2 full by building to 60k initially. UH just drew 30k against Tennessee Tech, which is bad for a school hoping to jump to a P5, but also good because this was a school who was averaging 20k in attendance 10 years ago. Rice played UH in 2001 and 2002, the crowds are much different than back then.

As far as scheduling is concerned, Levine, UH's last coach turned down 1 for 1's with Arizona, ASU, Wisconsin, and I've heard 1 more school. So although this "new" scheduling strategy is similar to Rice, Boise St, pre Big XII TCU, etc it is news for UH. It's pretty obvious that the # of season ticket holders is plateauing around 14-15k because it's hard to get people to care when you play nobodies Tennessee Tech, and AAC teams. Not to mention you walk the talk of winning big games without playing them. Not to mention if UH can fill 30k OF 40K for Tennessee Tech, they can easily sell out a game against a big name school with >75% UH fans.

Herman has been a big part in driving more media coverage of UH. He had Pete Thamel of SI ghost write a column for him last week, and he's very good friends with Bruce Feldman who was breaking the Herman to UH thing as it happened and has been consistently mentioning UH in his columns. Herman openly called out certain local media outlets for not covering the AAC media days in Connecticut (Although I don't blame them), and that seemed to have worked, partially. Also, Herman "mentioned" in the column he "wrote" for SI that he has weekly quotas for tweets for every coach on staff because he wants to be ever present on twitter. So, essentially he has been the running marketing in addition to coaching, and this is all mostly for recruiting but also attendance.

I'm glad to see UH play Rice 4 times in 5 years. Mostly because I have degrees and season tickets from both schools, but also because it is a cross town rivalry and it is an away game that the away team doesn't have to pay for a flight/bus trip. Also, I can get some of my Rice grad friends to come to a Rice-UH game when they wouldn't normally go to any Rice games.

The biggest difference between marketing at UH and Rice is that they talk about a lot of things that don't pan out, or at least don't pan out the way they said they would... while we tend to wait until the ink is dry to talk about them.

Case-in-point, I've seen numerous renditions of augmentations to various UH athletics facilities over the last decade or so, only a few of which actually came to fruition, and the funding was 'questionable'... and while Greenspan seems to have tried to mimic that with the 'south complex' that never came about, it had previously AND SINCE been our penchant not to announce things until they were essentially funded and ready to break ground.

UH can talk about not scheduling FCS programs as if it is important, but to be honest, p5 programs don't seem to have much trouble doing so themselves.... and given our recent and future schedule including USC, UCLA, Purdue, Kansas, A&M, Miss State, Texas, Tech, Baylor, Notre Dame etc... as MA points out, we could have essentially argued the same thing.

I'll harken back to what i have repeatedly said, and apologize for doing so...

The issue for p5 is revenue.... and that is really it. I include 'buts in the seats' or 'eyes on TV' as revenue.

If UH's marketing puts more casual fans in the seats, that is great... but they have to be there to see UH, or at the very least, a rivalry game... and not merely to see their (already p5) opponent. UT and A&M, so vicariously the Big12 and SEC have already decided that they don't really need either of us to reach the Houston market.

Anybody that would like and watch UH simply because they are good will already like Alabama or Baylor or UT or A&M for the same reasons. That doesn't mean that they still won't get the nod over us for their enrollment or Boise for their location, but I suspect that the p5 knows that Rice (or UH) would be better in p5 than we are in CUSA, and Alabama would be worse in g5 than in the SEC.... meaning they can 'get there' quality-wise either way... and that the questions are 1) will they simply take the money and run as we did in the SWC and 2) whether they expand or dilute the pie when they join.

I still believe (jmho) that outside of their own alums, UH dilutes the pie, at least as far as the Big12 and SEC go. The people in Houston that root for UH only if they are good are already rooting for Alabama or Baylor or UT or A&M or TCU for the same reasons. Rice and our academic reputation gives people a reason OTHER than 'because we are good' to root for us... and those people wouldn't necessarily root for Alabama or A&M.

Currently, we're just not good enough for them to bother with.

Here would be the question. If UH and Rice were both top 25 with some consistency, which game vs a team like Alabama would bring more 'casual' fans? UH will of course argue UH, but I'm not so sure. I think if we marketed it as the 1980's Notre Dame - Miami game was (not quite so obvious as convicts vs Catholics but still as david/goliath with an actual solid chance to win) I think we might do exceptionally well. I think there is a 'different' fan who wants to see the smart kids win which 'expands' the pie

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Rice has filled its 2019 non-conference schedule:

Home: Baylor, Texas A&M, Wake Forest

Road: Army

(09-17-2015 02:08 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Rice has filled its 2019 non-conference schedule:

Home: Baylor, Texas A&M, Wake Forest

Road: Army

Now THAT is a schedule! Can't beat the 7 home games. Hope we are on the upswing then.

(09-17-2015 02:36 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 02:08 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Rice has filled its 2019 non-conference schedule:

Home: Baylor, Texas A&M, Wake Forest

Road: Army

Now THAT is a schedule! Can't beat the 7 home games. Hope we are on the upswing then.

Wow! A&M coming to HRS in 2019? That's impressive!

(09-17-2015 01:50 PM)sacoog06 Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Second was a focus on the G5 games to be regional, like North Texas, UTSA, and the current games scheduled with Texas State.

It is not too different from the Rice schedules, as long as Houston can find home and home deals with P5 programs.

I would probably agree with most of what is said here. UH doesn't really have "T-shirt fans" or "Walmart fans" (make your joke about UH alums shopping at Walmart) and maybe they never will, but as was mentioned they are a large public school with a large amount of alumni, so they don't need to convince non-alumni to meet their immediate attendance goals. Someone mentioned that the stadium holds 40k and P5's want to see more attendance than that, that's true, mostly (with some exceptions like WSU, but they are an exception that proves the rule). UH can expand the stadium to 60k, if they can somehow consistently show that they can fill 40k. That was a requirement in the plans of the new stadium, but it also didn't make sense to have a stadium that would always be 1/2 full by building to 60k initially. UH just drew 30k against Tennessee Tech, which is bad for a school hoping to jump to a P5, but also good because this was a school who was averaging 20k in attendance 10 years ago. Rice played UH in 2001 and 2002, the crowds are much different than back then.

As far as scheduling is concerned, Levine, UH's last coach turned down 1 for 1's with Arizona, ASU, Wisconsin, and I've heard 1 more school. So although this "new" scheduling strategy is similar to Rice, Boise St, pre Big XII TCU, etc it is news for UH. It's pretty obvious that the # of season ticket holders is plateauing around 14-15k because it's hard to get people to care when you play nobodies Tennessee Tech, and AAC teams. Not to mention you walk the talk of winning big games without playing them. Not to mention if UH can fill 30k OF 40K for Tennessee Tech, they can easily sell out a game against a big name school with >75% UH fans.

Herman has been a big part in driving more media coverage of UH. He had Pete Thamel of SI ghost write a column for him last week, and he's very good friends with Bruce Feldman who was breaking the Herman to UH thing as it happened and has been consistently mentioning UH in his columns. Herman openly called out certain local media outlets for not covering the AAC media days in Connecticut (Although I don't blame them), and that seemed to have worked, partially. Also, Herman "mentioned" in the column he "wrote" for SI that he has weekly quotas for tweets for every coach on staff because he wants to be ever present on twitter. So, essentially he has been the running marketing in addition to coaching, and this is all mostly for recruiting but also attendance.

I'm glad to see UH play Rice 4 times in 5 years. Mostly because I have degrees and season tickets from both schools, but also because it is a cross town rivalry and it is an away game that the away team doesn't have to pay for a flight/bus trip. Also, I can get some of my Rice grad friends to come to a Rice-UH game when they wouldn't normally go to any Rice games.

That is good info. Thanks Coog. I think UH is doing everything right for their situation- if they follow up this media blitz with a great season record-wise and attendance-wise, then they will be in a pretty good spot.

This is why we needed to beat Texas or need to beat Baylor- and then run the table in conference. We don't want to be playing catch up with UH in all aspects of the program. If they win the AAC and we go 8-4 and get second in the West division (as most predict), we might be totally forgotten in the local (and national) media.

(09-17-2015 02:55 PM)owl95 Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 02:36 PM)cr11owl Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 02:08 PM)WRCisforgotten79 Wrote:  

(09-17-2015 12:58 PM)ESE84 Wrote:  Buried in the story were two interesting points. The first was reference to talks between Rice and Houston to extend the Bayou Bucket series in 2020 and 2021. I guess that means it takes a break in 2019?

Rice has filled its 2019 non-conference schedule:

Home: Baylor, Texas A&M, Wake Forest

Road: Army

Now THAT is a schedule! Can't beat the 7 home games. Hope we are on the upswing then.

Wow! A&M coming to HRS in 2019? That's impressive!

Is the A&M game officially @Rice? I remember when the series was announced, the 2019 game was kind of left open on whether it would be @Reliant or @Rice, presumably based on Rice's ability to accommodate a large crowd in 2019. The Patterson EZF is a nice first step, but is it enough to host A&M?

(09-17-2015 01:54 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  The biggest difference between marketing at UH and Rice is that they talk about a lot of things that don't pan out, or at least don't pan out the way they said they would... while we tend to wait until the ink is dry to talk about them.

Case-in-point, I've seen numerous renditions of augmentations to various UH athletics facilities over the last decade or so, only a few of which actually came to fruition, and the funding was 'questionable'... and while Greenspan seems to have tried to mimic that with the 'south complex' that never came about, it had previously AND SINCE been our penchant not to announce things until they were essentially funded and ready to break ground.

UH can talk about not scheduling FCS programs as if it is important, but to be honest, p5 programs don't seem to have much trouble doing so themselves.... and given our recent and future schedule including USC, UCLA, Purdue, Kansas, A&M, Miss State, Texas, Tech, Baylor, Notre Dame etc... as MA points out, we could have essentially argued the same thing.

I'll harken back to what i have repeatedly said, and apologize for doing so...

The issue for p5 is revenue.... and that is really it. I include 'buts in the seats' or 'eyes on TV' as revenue.

If UH's marketing puts more casual fans in the seats, that is great... but they have to be there to see UH, or at the very least, a rivalry game... and not merely to see their (already p5) opponent. UT and A&M, so vicariously the Big12 and SEC have already decided that they don't really need either of us to reach the Houston market.

Anybody that would like and watch UH simply because they are good will already like Alabama or Baylor or UT or A&M for the same reasons. That doesn't mean that they still won't get the nod over us for their enrollment or Boise for their location, but I suspect that the p5 knows that Rice (or UH) would be better in p5 than we are in CUSA, and Alabama would be worse in g5 than in the SEC.... meaning they can 'get there' quality-wise either way... and that the questions are 1) will they simply take the money and run as we did in the SWC and 2) whether they expand or dilute the pie when they join.

I still believe (jmho) that outside of their own alums, UH dilutes the pie, at least as far as the Big12 and SEC go. The people in Houston that root for UH only if they are good are already rooting for Alabama or Baylor or UT or A&M or TCU for the same reasons. Rice and our academic reputation gives people a reason OTHER than 'because we are good' to root for us... and those people wouldn't necessarily root for Alabama or A&M.

Currently, we're just not good enough for them to bother with.

Here would be the question. If UH and Rice were both top 25 with some consistency, which game vs a team like Alabama would bring more 'casual' fans? UH will of course argue UH, but I'm not so sure. I think if we marketed it as the 1980's Notre Dame - Miami game was (not quite so obvious as convicts vs Catholics but still as david/goliath with an actual solid chance to win) I think we might do exceptionally well. I think there is a 'different' fan who wants to see the smart kids win which 'expands' the pie

Agree. And I will just say- how cool would that scenario be?? I'd love for both Rice and UH to be top 25 and to play that year and every year. 2008 was as close as I have seen to that and was a pretty darn good atmosphere at HRS.

BTW, nice post SACOOG. Don't disagree at all. UH doesn't have to fail for Rice to succeed and vice versa. We are completely different models.

It was huge that UH was able to replace the mega donor money of John Moores with that of Tilman Fertitta. I wasn't aware that Tilman was a big UH donor or booster. He may have contributed a good bit of money before being named to the UH Board, but it seems as if he has really opened up his wallet since being named Chairman. I know he was appointed to the UH Board by Perry in 2009 and I am guessing that Khator who arrived in 2008 really pushed for him to be on the Board.

(09-17-2015 01:54 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  The biggest difference between marketing at UH and Rice is that they talk about a lot of things that don't pan out, or at least don't pan out the way they said they would... while we tend to wait until the ink is dry to talk about them.

That is the difference in the methods, while I would argue that the biggest difference is the results. While Rice and UH have, in a lot of ways, played to a draw in recent history, the general perception is that UH is somewhat relevant, while Rice isn't. Sure, this may not get them into the Big XII, and no one is fawning over them like people did with TCU, but they have achieved some level of better brand perception than we have.

Part of that, IMO is attitude. they talk about no FCS and playing and beating P5 teams even if they aren't good. We are still arguing and patting ourselves on the back for beating Marshall, which while a good win, is stunningly irrelevant to anyone but us and them. At the same time our last AD is running around with his sandwich board comments.

Change is coming, we certainly have it with the new regime, but there is a fundamental attitude difference still. Methods are what they are, you agree with some and disagree with others, but there is a mentality and perception gap and UH is ahead.

(09-17-2015 11:04 PM)Antarius Wrote:  Methods are what they are, you agree with some and disagree with others, but there is a mentality and perception gap and UH is ahead.

The sandwich board approach doesn't seem to bother UH. It seems to really bother us.

If JFk had made the speech he did and we hadn't gotten to the moon, I think lots of people would have said.. 'oh well, it was a good effort' and those are UH (and most other school's) fans. I don't think that by and large, Rice fans and especially Rice leadership would.