30 Reasons Why Moving the Wazzu Game Is Wrong For UH (FREE)

Sources told Mark Berman today that the UH game with Washington State, scheduled for 9/14/2019, will be moved to NRG Stadium and bumped up to Friday, September 13th. This is the wrong decision for UH at a time when we need to be building the on-campus experience.
 
Many are comparing this game to the OU game from 2016. That’s off the mark for plenty of reasons which we will list below. Washington State is having a nice season but they aren’t in the same league as Oklahoma.
 
Here’s our ‘laundry list’ of reasons why this is a bad move for the Coogs.
 

• College. Football. Belongs. On. Campus.
   

• This series was negotiated as a home and home. A P5 school volunteered to come to our home stadium and we are giving it away.
   

• Now we are stuck playing a neutral and away. Not with a blue blood like OU but with Washington State.
   

• And OU was the season opener. Huge difference in opening weekend and this game.
   

• There won’t be a preseason marketing push or build-up for this game. Because it will (likely) be our 3rd game.
   

• UH is 22-2 at TDECU over the last 4 seasons. Never give up your homefield advantage.
   

• Virtually no one is flying from the state of Washington for a Friday game in week 3. Wazzu isn’t helping us fill this stadium.
   

• Home games >>>>> neutral games. Even ones that are 5 miles away. Why? Because…
   

• College. Football. Belongs. On. Campus.
   

• Neutral games are killing the sport. There were 130,000 empty seats in neutral games this September between the games in Charlotte, Atlanta, Arlington, and the Advocare game at NRG.
   

• The Ole Miss and Texas Tech game at NRG announced 40,000. That was generous:
   
  

  

• To make this game a success, we need lots and lots of casual fans. Will we be able to convince those fans to leave work on a Friday and head to NRG?
   

• Students are subsidizing TDECU. They deserve our home games to be played at home – not moved across town.
   

• We sold the entire UH community on TDECU so that we didn’t have to move home games to NRG.
   

• It’s a Friday game. We lost a home game to move to a Friday.
   

• We will be going up against Texas high school football. That’s a bad idea for any number of reasons.
   

• Remember that time we played a big game in town on a Friday night? It was on 8/29/2014 when we played UTS….. never mind.
   

• Our last home game on a non-Black Friday Friday? 21,471 in attendance.
   

• 40,000 screaming fans at TDECU > 50,000 screaming fans at NRG. But there’s very little chance of 50,000 fans. This is not a kick-off game. This is week 3.
   

• Only 3 of Wazzu’s 8 games have been nationally televised. If Wazzu were a draw on TV, they’d play on it more. They are not a high-profile opponent.
   

• Our schedule at TDECU in 2019 is now Prairie View, Memphis, SMU, Navy, and one of UCF, UConn, or Cincinnati.
   

• By moving this game, we now play 5 home games – something that has not happened since the CFB schedule expanded to 12 games.
   

• The initial TDECU club seating pledges were for 5 years, starting in 2014 and ending in 2018. We’re going to ask people to re-up with this home schedule?
   

• The same goes for loge seats, party patios and suites. Donors that shell out big dollars should expect to see our best games played at home.
   

• TDECU paid a lot of money to put their name on our stadium for big games. Not for PV and UConn.
   

• Club seat holders, suite holders, RV’ers, advertisers, and people that bought signage have all invested significant resources in home games at TDECU. And we give the only good one of 2019 away?
   

• We open with OU in 2019. Week 2 is currently open (I suspect we play Prairie View that week). Then we go to Reliant in week 3 and to UNT in week 5. It’s conceivable that we don’t play an FBS game at home in September.
   

• Unlike the OU game there is no reason to buy season tickets to secure access to this game.  Wazzu has trouble selling out their 32k seat stadium and we haven’t had 32k bodies in attendance in 2-3 years. 
   

• Wazzu surging in the polls this year was a huge win for us hosting them next year. The game turned into a premium game at TDECU that you could sell ticket packages around. With Memphis and Navy you would have 3 solid games for mini plans. That’s gone now.
   

• There is no incentive for casual fans to lock in season tickets because you can walk up and buy one of the 70k tickets available.
   

• Even if the game sells 50k tickets and has close to that in actual attendance, there will still be a boat load of empty seats in NRG. Oh, and …
   

• College. Football. Belongs. On. Campus.

 
We left the Astrodome for Robertson because the on-campus experience is a mile better than being at Kirby and 610. If we go back for OU or a Texas or an LSU, I get it. Those are premier games and you have to do it.
 
But to move a home game to NRG on a Friday night against a team that won’t draw casual fans is a mistake. Getting new people to our campus to experience the atmosphere is a big deal. We gave away the store for a tiny bit of money that won’t help us long term.
 
We’re all Cougars. We’ll all be at NRG because the lights are on and the Coogs are playing. But this is still a poor decision for UH and our fans.
 
Brad Towns contributed to this story.
 
 
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