On Wednesday night, Kelvin Sampson, Mercy Miller, and Kalifa Sakho stepped up to the dais in the Jim Nantz Media Center to discuss a lopsided win over UCF. After about 10 minutes, Sampson dismissed the players and started taking questions solo. He let out a huge sigh and dismissed the first one, saying he could answer that writer’s questions the same every time. Still, he gave a long, meandering answer that touched on half a dozen topics, including Chris Cenac, confidence, UCF, player development, and building a program rather than a team.
But then he got onto NIL, a topic which inevitably turned into money. Or, more precisely, a lack of money. It was an honest answer that, on its face, is not in dispute. The University of Houston is behind. Compared to its Big 12 peers, UH struggles to raise donations, sell tickets, and fund facilities. Sampson did not tell anyone in that room something they did not know.
But he made the mistake that too many people make. The mistake that strips an answer of context or nuance. The one goof-up that dismisses every other word you say.
He wrote the headline.
You can’t do the media’s job for them, and you certainly cannot write the headline. Finding morsels of truth can be difficult, but not when the subject of the story writes the 60-point, bold-faced part that most people will see before moving on to the next tweet. The headline. And to his credit, Kelvin wrote a great headline. It was tight, it popped, and it told a story in only two words.
We’re poor.
It was a 23-minute press conference, a 5.5-minute answer, with only 93 seconds devoted to NIL. But it’s two words – one, really – that anyone will remember. We’re poor. Kelvin provided the headline and the power descriptor, too.
On Thursday, he clarified his remarks, but by then, everyone had formed an opinion, fired off the memes, and helped propel the line across the Internet. His more developed, day-after point was a great one: UH is nearly 30 years behind the original Big 12 schools in media rights, fundraising, and ticket sales. Texas Tech, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas, and Kansas State had a 30-year head start on media rights. Those six schools made well over $500,000,000 each in media rights between 1996 and UH’s entry to the league in July 2023. In the same period, UH made less than $60 million.
Houston won seven conference titles in 54 years in various conferences before Kelvin Sampson arrived (UH was independent from 1960 to 1975). In 11 seasons at Houston, Kelvin has won six.
In the Big 12, that is not sustainable unless you can compete at every level against your peers. Big 12 schools have been able to fundraise for 30 years, selling their donors on competing against the best (instead of Tulsa, UAB, and East Carolina). They’ve sold ticket packages that, for decades, included Texas, Texas A&M, and OU football and Kansas basketball. When you add it all up, those schools each have a nearly a billion-dollar head start on UH. Arizona and Arizona State were in the Pac-10/12 for that entire time and made hundreds of millions more. Colorado was between the Big 12 and Pac-12 all those years, and Utah and TCU each joined power leagues in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
In terms of basketball, UH is a pretty good rec league player who was drafted into the NBA and led his team to back-to-back titles in his first two years. Even with the handicap of 27 years in Conference USA and the American, Houston came in and dominated the Big 12 in the first two years: winning the conference by two games in 2024 and four games in 2025. That should never have happened, but it’s a testament to Kelvin Sampson and what he’s accomplished against all odds.
If “blue blood” status were conferred on teams based on how they’ve done since COVID, Houston Basketball is right there. UConn has two national titles, and Baylor, Kansas, and Florida each have one. But in that span, Houston has seven conference titles, two Final Fours, and the most NCAA Tournament wins of anyone (UH has 16 wins while UConn and Gonzaga each have 13).
In the era of NIL and revenue sharing, UH will need more money to stay at that level. Right after the “we’re poor” line, Sampson said, “The way our recruiting is going, we have to stop at some point because we don’t have enough money to keep bringing in really good players.” He’s right. Staying at the top will continue to cost a lot, and there is no bottomless pit of money.
The same day Sampson made these comments, Willie Fritz had reiterated that his goal is to win a national title. To help the school accomplish that, Fritz said he would work to fundraise and sell more season tickets, because UH still has an uphill climb to catch up. On some level, Kelvin’s comments were meant to drive home the same point, but his execution missed.
