University of Houston Football Stadium

[Captain Impossible]

I like the part where the university suckered its ignorant students into voting for (I, for one, voted against) raising fees to help pay for this scam and then turned around and sold the naming rights for many millions of dollars. It's good to know that a small piece of my student loan repayment (plus interest) is going to this because they clearly needed it so very much.

[bobruss]

According to a report in the Houston Chronicle today it is one of the best contracts per year for any college football stadium naming rights, in the country. I don't really care what the name is. They are a very fine credit union and an extra 1.5 million a year towards the stadium and football, is a good thing. Its a much needed improvement and hopefully more people will come out to support the team.

As to the students getting hosed. I believe they get tickets given to them for each home game so for those that want to get back some of their investment its not so bad. Now they just need to start scheduling some real competition instead of the likes of what they have scheduled for the opening season. It's almost embarrassing. I went there so I feel like I have a right to say their schedule sucks this year. They had plenty of time to prepare a better schedule five years ago when they new this was coming.

[Houston19514]

I like the part where the university suckered its ignorant students into voting for (I, for one, voted against) raising fees to help pay for this scam and then turned around and sold the naming rights for many millions of dollars. It's good to know that a small piece of my student loan repayment (plus interest) is going to this because they clearly needed it so very much.

 

No one was suckered.  The sale of naming rights was part of the financing package from day one. 

[shasta]

I like the part where the university suckered its ignorant students into voting for (I, for one, voted against) raising fees to help pay for this scam and then turned around and sold the naming rights for many millions of dollars. It's good to know that a small piece of my student loan repayment (plus interest) is going to this because they clearly needed it so very much.

 

Captain- the only one who was suckered was YOU for taking out student loans. Blame yourself and not the University of Houston athletic department.

[shasta]

According to a report in the Houston Chronicle today it is one of the best contracts per year for any college football stadium naming rights, in the country. I don't really care what the name is. They are a very fine credit union and an extra 1.5 million a year towards the stadium and football, is a good thing. Its a much needed improvement and hopefully more people will come out to support the team.

As to the students getting hosed. I believe they get tickets given to them for each home game so for those that want to get back some of their investment its not so bad. Now they just need to start scheduling some real competition instead of the likes of what they have scheduled for the opening season. It's almost embarrassing. I went there so I feel like I have a right to say their schedule sucks this year. They had plenty of time to prepare a better schedule five years ago when they new this was coming.

 

True...almost every other major school in Texas has fees for the athletic derpartment PLUS they make you pay for student tickets.

 

UH stidents actually have it easy- check out the student tickets for Texas A&M and then tell me UH students are getting screwed.

[Luminare]

um did you ever go to Texas A&M??? Students there get a really great deal! I mean for around 300-400 dollars you can pretty much get into ANY sport all year long. A pretty good investment and will be even better when the A&M stadium is online because for non-students it will be enormously expensive. If the university didn't offer these kinds of passes (which are supported by the 12th Man Foundation as well as generous donations from the aggie network) then students would be paying for tickets individually at 50-60 dollars a pop almost every game! Most Universities don't even offer something like this.

 

Next time do a little research or even ask an aggie before you make baseless assumptions. We get better deals for our games than most students around the nation do for their sports as a whole!

[kbates2]

Yeah A&M students get screwed.

[MexAmerican_Moose]

yup, a&m students get screwed

[shasta]

um did you ever go to Texas A&M??? Students there get a really great deal! I mean for around 300-400 dollars you can pretty much get into ANY sport all year long. A pretty good investment and will be even better when the A&M stadium is online because for non-students it will be enormously expensive. If the university didn't offer these kinds of passes (which are supported by the 12th Man Foundation as well as generous donations from the aggie network) then students would be paying for tickets individually at 50-60 dollars a pop almost every game! Most Universities don't even offer something like this.

 

Next time do a little research or even ask an aggie before you make baseless assumptions. We get better deals for our games than most students around the nation do for their sports as a whole!

 

Not sure if this is a serious post or sarcastic? $300-$400???

 

The price, for students,  to attend ALL University of Houston sporing events is ZERO dollars.....all you have to do is show your ID.

 

Good UH Football season tickets aren't even $400 and that's for the brand new stadium. I know I paid less than $400 and I'm not too far from the field, on the ground level.

 

Way to drink the maroon kool-aid and think that charging broke college students $400 is a "great deal"

Edited July 10, 2014 by shasta

[brijonmang]

I'm not sure of the specifics of the schools mentioned already but I know at Texas Tech we had $300 included in our tuition as an "athletics fee" that covered your tickets to go to every sporting event for the year.  Obviously, if you didn't go to the sporting events it may be somewhat of a nuisance for you but it helped keep our programs running and if you DID go to the sporting events it turns out to be a pretty good deal.  You could go to 7 or 8 football games, ~18 basketball games (boys and girls), ~20 baseball or softball games, volleyball...everything.  Just swipe your student ID as you went through the gates.  Sounds like the same philosophy as UH just with the initial charge.  

 

$300-$400 for an entire year of sporting events IS a great deal even if you're a poor college student.  

[Slick Vik]

There's a reason it's free at UH, it's UH and not UT or A and M.

[arche_757]

There's a reason it's free at UH, it's UH and not UT or A and M.

 

Quite a few universities award their students free passes (or greatly reduced rates) for sporting events.  It has to do with getting bodies in the seats, and its an easy perk to give a student who is shelling out thousands of dollars anyway.

 

Just a quick glance through:

Notre Dame - $240

Michigan - $240

Alabama - charge packages of $40 (for 4 games) and $30 each (for three games)

USC - $175

Ohio State - $144 to $250 (depending on how many hours and what games you'll attend).

 

I'm guessing other sporting events for those schools aren't nearly as coveted and probably something like $5 at the gate for students?  Or some other such amount.

 

UH is doing fine.  With the new stadium + added victories and more on campus housing they will eventually need to charge to prevent 29,000 out of the 41,000 seats being students and sold at lower costs than regular seats.

[Nate99]

 

 

Way to drink the maroon kool-aid and think that charging broke college students $400 is a "great deal"

 

The charge for tickets for students at A&M is optional and heavily subsidized based on what alumni pay for equivalent tickets. For 2014-2015, they can get in to all sports for the entire academic year for $290.  Students at A&M do not pay for anything athletics related through mandatory fees. The A&M athletic department is a profit center for the university.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Nate99

[arche_757]

If the students stopped paying the money for the tickets, the school would probably drop the ticket prices.  But they haven't stopped buying the tickets, so they won't drop the prices.

[kbates2]

There isn't a separate charge for athletic fees for UH either.  I assume there will be once the stadium fee jumps on.  That means that UH students could attend for free.  FTW.

[kbates2]

So I noticed on the construction cam that a new crane went up just over the stadium lights in the North West Endzone.  Does anybody know what this is for?  I know it has nothing at all to do with the stadium, I just was unaware of any projects going up right there.

[Timoric]

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Edited July 8, 2019 by Timoric

[Luminare]

Not sure if this is a serious post or sarcastic? $300-$400???

 

The price, for students,  to attend ALL University of Houston sporing events is ZERO dollars.....all you have to do is show your ID.

 

Good UH Football season tickets aren't even $400 and that's for the brand new stadium. I know I paid less than $400 and I'm not too far from the field, on the ground level.

 

Way to drink the maroon kool-aid and think that charging broke college students $400 is a "great deal"

 

For how competitive A&M sports teams usually are and the size of the university it is a good deal. Also, nice job cherry picking the highest number just prop up your argument lol. I thank Nate99 for narrowing down the number to 290 for ALL sports. Not to mention most of the price for that sports pass is football and paying a bit extra for the all sports pass makes going to any basketball game or baseball game virtually free.

 

It's also not mandatory to have one or pay for one. The only students that require mandatory passes is the Corps of Cadets.

 

I don't even think you know why UH games are "free" and that's because the costs are hidden in fees so if you do go to UH you pay for sports regardless whether you like sports or not.

 

It's actually common for either smaller schools or commuter schools to do this since the population base is smaller closer to campus and they know that sports isn't the main draw on campus. They make it "free" so it's an added incentive to go because i think we all know that not every game is going to sell out. You only price tickets if you know there is going to be a limit to how many people will show up to a game. In a&m's case and other larger universities where sports is a huge draw the amount of students that would go to a game most often exceeds the amount of seats.

 

So my response earlier wasn't sarcastic I was actually being serious. As Arche pointed out, UH is looking to reverse its commuter school stigma and trying to bring students and people in general closer to campus. Once this happens (probably won't be for a number of years). That hidden cost will then become an actual optional fee because they will be bringing in more students who might attend games than what they can seat.

 

Simple economics

Edited July 15, 2014 by Luminare

[cloud713]

For how competitive A&M sports teams usually are and the size of the university it is a good deal. Also, nice job cherry picking the highest number just prop up your argument lol. I thank Nate99 for narrowing down the number to 290 for ALL sports. Not to mention most of the price for that sports pass is football and paying a bit extra for the all sports pass makes going to any basketball game or baseball game virtually free.

It's also not mandatory to have one or pay for one. The only students that require mandatory passes is the Corps of Cadets.

I don't even think you know why UH games are "free" and that's because the costs are hidden in fees so if you do go to UH you pay for sports regardless whether you like sports or not.

It's actually common for either smaller schools or commuter schools to do this since the population base is smaller closer to campus and they know that sports isn't the main draw on campus. They make it "free" so it's an added incentive to go because i think we all know that not every game is going to sell out. You only price tickets if you know there is going to be a limit to how many people will show up to a game. In a&m's case and other larger universities where sports is a huge draw the amount of students that would go to a game most often exceeds the amount of seats.

So my response earlier wasn't sarcastic I was actually being serious. As Arche pointed out, UH is looking to reverse its commuter school stigma and trying to bring students and people in general closer to campus. Once this happens (probably won't be for a number of years). That hidden cost will then become an actual optional fee because they will be bringing in more students who might attend games than what they can seat.

Simple economics

The "hidden fees" are how it is at Baylor too. All the games are free, but you know they're slipping athletic fees somewhere in the tuition. The only difference is Baylor has experienced much greater success as of late and they didn't have to raise tuition to pay for the new stadium.. (I still can't believe UH had to do that) we had rich donors give us the money.

[totheskies]

UH students get in free to all UH sporting events. Season Tickets packages for the 2014 football season start at $140.

And as for if building "The DEC" was a good thing? As a UH alum I see both sides. Keep in mind that current students are paying fees not only for the new stadium, but also the UC construction, and pretty soon the Hofheinz Pavilion. The average price per 3 hour course is nearly $1500. At my undergrad institution, that was $400 over the price of my ENTIRE semester's tuition, and I only finished undergrad 9 years ago!!

On the plus side, the value of a UH degree has increased rapidly over the last few years. Students (especially ones that pick a good major and work hard while in school) are seeing that money paid back in substantial dividends. Plus a strong UH brings strength to Houston.

The new stadium is a net positive here.

[shasta]

 

It's actually common for either smaller schools or commuter schools to do this since the population base is smaller closer to campus and they know that sports isn't the main draw on campus. They make it "free" so it's an added incentive to go because i think we all know that not every game is going to sell out. You only price tickets if you know there is going to be a limit to how many people will show up to a game. In a&m's case and other larger universities where sports is a huge draw the amount of students that would go to a game most often exceeds the amount of seats.

 

To address the comment in bold: Despite most people's jaded opinion, the University is neither a small school (apx. 41,000 students) nor is it  a true definition of a "commuter school" anymore. Maybe in the 1970s but not now. The truth is that there are close to 10,000 beds on campus making it #2 in the state of Texas in campus living opportunities (quite a cry form everyone commuting) and I imagine another 10,000 live inside the loop. I,myself, lived on campus while I attended......... and I even grew up in the Houston metro.

 

As far as hidden costs, I seriously considered a number of Texas schools, for both my undergrad and graduate degrees. I ultimately picked UH for both but my analysis found that UH and Texas A&M had comparable tuition rates.   Rice and UT, on the otherhand,  were double and almost triple for the same programs that I was looking into. The point is that hidden or not, the ROI is significantly higher at UH and at TAMU but at UH you get access to free athletic events. The UH football team has been ranked more times in the top 25, since 2009, than TAMU anyway, reaching up to #6 in the BCS standings in 2011 so the quality product has also been there...for free!

 

While it may only be a few hundred bucks at TAMU it still is an additional cost for the students. That's my only point.

Edited July 16, 2014 by shasta

[shasta]

The "hidden fees" are how it is at Baylor too. All the games are free, but you know they're slipping athletic fees somewhere in the tuition. The only difference is Baylor has experienced much greater success as of late and they didn't have to raise tuition to pay for the new stadium.. (I still can't believe UH had to do that) we had rich donors give us the money.

 

You had a rich donor named Drayton Mclane, who slum-lorded the Houston Astros , refused to spend money on draft picks, pioneered a blackmailing scheme to get them into the American League, pre-fabricated a cable network agreement and its false value, all while selling the team for a ridiculous profit on his way out.....  and then he put that money into Baylor's new stadium.

 

He gave so much money that they are naming the stadium after him.

[IronTiger]

A&M's games are simply really popular. Even in the worst days of Aggie football, they drew tens of thousands of people (60k, IIRC?), while at Baylor, they can (practically) give away seats for free and still require near-permanent tarps. [That's what happened at Floyd Casey, you can bet that will happen at "McLame" Stadium]

A&M of course has its own problems with enlarged fees and all that, but that's a different issue altogether. Point is, a college football stadium isn't obliged to give students free/super-reduced seats in the stadium, nor is it "the norm" to charge hundreds for a seat.

In U of H's case, football just isn't that big of a thing. They're in a relatively obscure conference (at least C-USA) and if they were to play A&M, it would be one of the first games in seasons where A&M can hone their skills in thrashing lesser opponents (like Rice--sorry, Owls)

Edited July 16, 2014 by IronTiger

[KinkaidAlum]

I'll remind both the Bears and the Farmers that things were so terrible in their football programs that each school turned to UH to hire away a coach. 

 

Things are looking up on Cullen for the following reasons;

 

1) New revenue streams. Luxury suites, club level seats, and loge boxes sold out quickly. UH will be generating MILLIONS more in ticket revenue per year.

 

2) Season ticket sales have a chance to break the all-time record. Think about that. UH might sell more season tickets playing UTSA, Grambling, UCF, Tulsa, and Tulane then it ever did playing UT, A&M, Arkansas, Baylor, and Tech. That's pretty impressive. People are coming out because of UH; not the opponents.

 

3) New dorms are attracting better students. The first private dorm is opening this fall. Pre-leasing was so successful a second one is already being built.

 

4) Despite the misinformation about students paying for the stadium, over $60 million came from private donors from with 4 major gifts of over $5 million. 

 

5) Naming rights. A lucrative one at that with a local company investing in the local, public, university.

 

[cloud713]

You had a rich donor named Drayton Mclane, who slum-lorded the Houston Astros , refused to spend money on draft picks, pioneered a blackmailing scheme to get them into the American League, pre-fabricated a cable network agreement and its false value, all while selling the team for a ridiculous profit on his way out.....  and then he put that money into Baylor's new stadium.

 

He gave so much money that they are naming the stadium after him.

 

You sound salty? I don't care for the route he took the Astros either, but you can't deny it was a pretty smart business move. And yeah he donated a **** load of money.. They said it was the largest gift in school history, and we got a 200 million dollar donation back in 08 or so.. But to be fair, the field was named after the Williams or something, who also donated a chunk of money.

A&M's games are simply really popular. Even in the worst days of Aggie football, they drew tens of thousands of people (60k, IIRC?), while at Baylor, they can (practically) give away seats for free and still require near-permanent tarps. [That's what happened at Floyd Casey, you can bet that will happen at "McLame" Stadium]

I doubt the tarp will be brought back. Not for a few years at least and that's assuming we fall back to doormat status.

[jt16]

You sound salty? I don't care for the route he took the Astros either, but you can't deny it was a pretty smart business move. And yeah he donated a **** load of money.. They said it was the largest gift in school history, and we got a 200 million dollar donation back in 08 or so.. But to be fair, the field was named after the Williams or something, who also donated a chunk of money.

I doubt the tarp will be brought back. Not for a few years at least and that's assuming we fall back to doormat status.

You won't anytime soon. Ut will take doormat status. Charlie Strong was a peculiar hire.

[bobruss]

Kinkaid alum

Very we'll put. I think we also now have the second most students living on campus in the state.

Far from the days of commuter school. I'm excited about being able to catch the rail to the games.

How many schools fans can ride the train to the games?

[Slick Vik]

To address the comment in bold: Despite most people's jaded opinion, the University is neither a small school (apx. 41,000 students) nor is it a true definition of a "commuter school" anymore. Maybe in the 1970s but not now. The truth is that there are close to 10,000 beds on campus making it #2 in the state of Texas in campus living opportunities (quite a cry form everyone commuting) and I imagine another 10,000 live inside the loop. I,myself, lived on campus while I attended......... and I even grew up in the Houston metro.

As far as hidden costs, I seriously considered a number of Texas schools, for both my undergrad and graduate degrees. I ultimately picked UH for both but my analysis found that UH and Texas A&M had comparable tuition rates. Rice and UT, on the otherhand, were double and almost triple for the same programs that I was looking into. The point is that hidden or not, the ROI is significantly higher at UH and at TAMU but at UH you get access to free athletic events. The UH football team has been ranked more times in the top 25, since 2009, than TAMU anyway, reaching up to #6 in the BCS standings in 2011 so the quality product has also been there...for free!

While it may only be a few hundred bucks at TAMU it still is an additional cost for the students. That's my only point.

That's still 75% commuting. I would also disagree on ROI because Rice, A&M, and Rice are considered much better universities. They look at UH students as the ones who couldn't get in the better schools, or in the rare case, took full scholarships.

[Timoric]

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Edited July 8, 2019 by Timoric

[monarch]

You won't anytime soon. Ut will take doormat status. Charlie Strong was a peculiar hire.

TEXAS coach charlie strong, is a MAGNIFICENT hire!  TEXAS, shall never become a doormat to anyone.  for whom are you kidding?