potenital potential potential. Just do it. I still don't think there was a good reason for the attendance numbers at the UH games last year but there is a whole offseason now to generate hype and excitement. If UH and Houston are as valuable as you guys think they then should sell 40,000 tickets every home game with no excuses. Baylor has averaged 46,000 tickets in the last two years and the official capacity is 45,000. Texas Tech averages around 56,000 as well. UH averaged around 34,000 in a city of 5 million. I'm not going to bother listing the populations of Waco and Lubbock but it's not 5 million. I will send my congrats and flowers the day UH gets to the ACC but until you can fill a 40,000 stadium and get the people in Houston to actually watch the games then this is just fluff. If UH brings you the Houston market then 3 of the top 10 most watched games in Houston should be UH games. Otherwise it's a team in a market that mostly watches SEC and Big 12 games.
yes - when people say UH has 42,000 students, remember, so many of those are commuter students which tends to detract from their school involvement. Houston Community College has over 57,000 students...big whoop. You don't see them selling out sporting events for a reason.
I don't think the "power brokers" (Presidents and ADs) ever mention specific schools, and with good reason. The only time I've ever seen anyone within the Big 12 name names was that recent article by Trammel, which is not offering a direct quote and vaguely referencing something said (but for some reason not reported) 5 months ago. I dunno if I read that and think "yep, that's it, that's the list!" The FOIA request turned up some positive comments from Boren re: UC, but that was in private, and also an endorsement that sounded about as much like a generic 'atta boy' as you typically hear. Renu met with Boren, Gorden Gee, Starr, and Fenves over the last 4-5 months, and I'm sure they all had some glowing things to say about her and UH as well... but I'm not getting my hopes up. College athletics is a zero sum game. There is only so much mindshare and TV money to go around. If UH joins a different P5 conference, thereby cracking open the Houston market to their conference network, every dollar that flows into that other P5 conference from ESPN/CBS/FOX/etc is a dollar that *could* have gone to the Big 12 instead. Or at the very least, those dollars empower a direct competitor of the Big 12 in the college athletics arms race. So, no, I don't think it's "silly" to take a "less valuable team" to prevent another conference from moving into your territory. Preventing your competition from growing stronger is as much of a legitimate strategy as empowering yourself. My belief is that the *best* way UH gets into the Big 12 is if it makes itself attractive enough to warrant attention from other P5 conferences. Unless the Big 12 leadership is asleep at the wheel, they won't allow UH to run off and join someone else.
It comes down to a simple equation... Does Big 12 + UH > Big 12 + UConn in terms of revenue. If UConn makes the Big 12 richer, then git r dun. Ain't got no beef with that. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you I know for certain whether this is true. I feel comfortable letting the TV executives look at the data and make that decision for themselves. Once the data is sliced and diced, I have to wonder what how the soft/subjective factors will be considered (geography, logistics, politics, academics, etc).
I'm so sick of the big 12 expansion rumors. That league is a joke to begin with and they ain't as if it is so storied league. The longhorn network is a joke as well.
Usually one of the ESPN channels. This coming season, I imagine every single UH game will be televised locally.
Glad what stopped by to give his opinion. He must be done with Taylor Swifts new album while browsing through Teen Vogue.
He goes to the Straight Outta Compton thread and starts talking about how he thinks that there should be a 2 Live Crew movie and how Luther Campbell is better than Tupac.
If you are sick of the rumors then why are you reading a thread about expansion rumors? Honestly, the amount of insider reporting on this is a tiny fraction of what it was a few years ago. It's mostly speculation. Just look at how long this thread goes without updates. Not to the Academics side of UT which will net over 100 million over the next 20 years. Plus the extra 200 million to the athletic departments. Is it good for the big 12? No. Has it done much for Texas? Not with how they played. Would have been way different if it was 2004-2009 Could you turn down 300 million dollars? I mean.... they had to consider the ramifications it could have to the rest of the conference. They invited A&M to make a joint network but they turned it down. You can't expect A&M to be happy after it's made. I think the money was too good and they knew that they could get into any conference they wanted if stuff fell apart. Selfish? yes. Would you turn down 300 million......eyyy
What's funny is that they talk about how A&M going to the SEC hurt the recruiting by bringing in a ton of new schools like Ole Miss or whatever to recruit in Texas.....well what do they think is going to happen when Houston joins a different P5 conference?
Lol exactly. We saw what another Texas school leaving did so well just not invite this one so it doesn't happen again! Wait...what?
Good read. Boren is the only one making sense in the BIG 12 by the way he is talking (expansion and killing off the LHN in favor of a conference TV deal) but no one is listening. If they keep ignoring OU you might see them moving on down the road. I can't see FSU leaving the ACC to join the BIG12. If the ACC wants to recruit in Texas it's easier to just add U of H. Big12 doesn't have the clout to poach a school from a Power 5 Conference. Especially without a TV deal. I could also see OU and UH going PAC-12 together. That makes it make sense for the PAC-12
