The University of Houston's football program averaged 27,423 fans per game this season, which represents a drop of almost 8,600 fans/game from last season. However last season's attendance was heavily influenced by the Texas game (and ticket brokers and Longhorn fans who may have bought season tickets just to secure a seat at said game), so the 2022 season may be a fairer comparison. In that case, the Cougars averaged 2,630 more fans/game than two years ago. Here's the graph:
The bad news is that this puts Houston dead last in the Big XII. The better news is that attendance has the potential to be better next year, with in-state rivals such as TCU and Texas Tech coming to town, along with the hype machine that is Deion Sanders and his Colorado Buffaloes. But, as the above graph has always shown, the one thing that really helps attendance is winning.
The Cougars, of course, did not win in 2024; they ended the season with a 4-8 record, identical to last year's campaign and one win better than my preseason prediction. It was understood that 2024 would likely be a rough year, as the program was in transition under a new coaching regime, and the previous coaching staff's indifference to recruiting had left some big holes in terms of talent.
While there were some encouraging moments to the season (avenging last year's loss to Rice, beating preseason conference favorite Utah and a ranked Kansas State team at home, upsetting TCU on the road), the program was overall very inconsistent.
The offense sputtered all season long, failed to score a touchdown in four games, and put up some of the worst stats in program history. Head coach Willie Fritz was forced to dismiss his offensive coordinator, Kevin Barbay, before the season even ended. Slade Nagle, who was previously Fritz's OC at Tulane and was an assistant at LSU this past season, now takes over on the offensive side of the ball.
The defense, on the other hand, excelled. Unfortunately for the Cougars, that meant that defensive coordinator Shiel Wood was poached by a program with deeper pockets at season's end. Fritz has since hired Austin Armstrong, who spent this past season as Florida, as Houston's new DC.
Fritz is already busily working on upgrading the program's talent for the 2025 season, bringing in a decent recruiting class during the early signing period and using the transfer portal to address some critical needs for next year, including a quarterback:
Former Texas A&M quarterback Conner Weigman is set to transfer to Houston for the 2025 season, he announced Wednesday night on social media.
Weigman, who began each of the past two seasons as Texas A&M's starter, entered the transfer portal Monday. Houston was the clear favorite to land the Cypress, Texas, native, who was ESPN's top pocket passer and No. 27 overall recruit in the 2022 class.
"I'm coming home. Time to go to Work H-Town," Weigman wrote on X.
The Cougars are also bringing in fresh talent for the offensive line. Unfortunately, the portal giveth and the portal taketh away.
Needless to say, the program has a busy offseason ahead of it. And while it's way too early to make predictions about the 2025 season, the rebuilding process under Willie Fritz is well underway and I'm cautiously hopeful that we'll see improvement on the field in 2025.
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