Tom Herman has the excitement around the Cougars at record levels, and opening night of the football season should be a sell out, but what about after that? | File photo/The Cougar

In this week’s round table, The Cougar sports staff discusses fan attendance, the effect of the number of commuters and balancing fan hopes and realistic expectations for Tom Herman and the Cougars.

How would you characterize UH’s student attendance at athletic events?

Sports writer Michael Calderon: To me, student attendance has been largely results driven. If the excitement of the event is high, then the attendance will spike. If it is nothing special, attendance will dwindle. Football is obviously the highest profile team on campus and draws the biggest crowd and even they have trouble filling the student section. When fans expect a stellar game, then they will show up.

Staff writer Shardanna Jones: Unimpressive. It’s sketchy and inconsistent most of the time. For some reason, UH fans will attend a game more because of the opposing team rather than to support their own. Sometimes I feel as though students need an incentive just to attend, and that is not OK.

Do you think attendance suffers due to the commuter nature of the school?

Sports editor Bryce Dodds: I think we’re past the point of blaming poor attendance on commuting by now. Between all of the residence halls on campus, there are enough students living here to completely fill the student section at the football games, which holds about 8,000 students. While the number of commuters may hurt the student attendance a bit, I think it’s a worn out excuse.

Staff writer Adam Coleman: I would say yes and no. Football being on the weekends doesn’t really suffer too much. For games during the week like basketball and baseball, I would say that it does suffer. On the other hand, there are more than enough student that live on campus to fill Hofheinz, so it boils down to people just not being interested.

With the importance Tom Herman has put on student involvement with the football team, do you think the attendance numbers will rise consistently this season?

MC: If Herman and company can increase student involvement in a way that creates new fan traditions and then maintain a high level of play then students will show up more on game days. The bigger impact will be building and holding a winning program that will pull in fans from the professional sports in town. Many other college programs reside in smaller towns with no NFL teams to compete with and that will make the task that much harder.

AC: The attendance will no doubt grow with all the excitement around UH. But, the only thing that will really raise attendance and keep it up is winning. The absolute worst thing to do is start off slow like last year.

Do you think the football team can live up to the hype that has been placed on them this offseason?

BD: I think the general hype around the program is a lot higher, due to the fans hopes of a potential move to the Big 12 and the clout of Herman. I think the Cougars can do a decent job of living up to all that is expected of them, but don’t be surprised if a couple of bad bounces leads the Cougars to a seven or eight win season, not nine or 10 wins like some people expect.

SJ: I am actually quite nervous that they won’t live up to the hype that was built, because fans are taking Herman’s “H-Town Takeover” seriously, and if they don’t produce, then what? Overall, they can do it if they get a winners mentality. This year can actually be the beginning for them.

sports@thedailycougar.com

—
“Round table: student attendance under microscope in Herman’s first year” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar