As I took a seat from my perch at the Big 12 basketball tournament on Friday night for the semifinals, I could not help but notice the emptiness of the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City.
Granted, the regional teams like Iowa State, Kansas and K-State were no longer in the tournament, but the four remaining teams: Houston, Arizona, Texas Tech and BYU were all expected to be here. They were the top four seeds in the tournament this year. It was far from a surprise that each of these teams were playing on Friday evening.
But this was the scene five minutes to tip off from Kansas City.
Now as a I noted in a follow up post on X, attendance did slightly improve as the game wore on.
But I could not help but wonder where the heck the Houston Cougars fans were?
This team was the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 Tournament. They just went 19-1 in the Big 12. And their fans were no where to be found as their team got set to try and punch a ticket to the Big 12 Tournament Championship Game.
This moment was expected, and the fan base was MIA.
Houston Athletics Begged For This Moment
Let’s not forget, this is what many Houston fans spent the last 30 years dreaming of. They wanted to find themselves back in a Power conference after getting shunned by the Big 12 and left in the dust of the Southwest Conference.
And after three decades as mostly an afterthought in the college sports world, they got their wish, in part thanks to a decision by the Texas Longhorns to bolt for the SEC.
Now, they’re sitting in the Big 12, as a premier team in college basketball, likely heading towards a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday. And this is the kind of turn out the fan base shows its program on the Friday night of the Big 12 Conference Tournament?
The University of Houston is currently producing 10,000 graduates per year. This is not a small alumni base. Their total fall enrollment for the Fall of 2024: 47,980. According to the University of Houston website, their enrollment has been at least 35,000 dating back to the early 2000’s.
Where are the fans? Where is the support?
There clearly is monetary support for head coach Kelvin Sampson, the roster and the program, by and large, but the fan support needs to be on display in these big moments.
Travel to Kansas City
There are seven non-stop flights from Kansas City to Houston on Sunday, for those wondering. And ticket prices on the secondary market to get into the Big 12 Tournament semifinals were going for under $20.
It wasn’t going to be cheap, but there will be Houston fans who travel to the NCAA Tournament next weekend. This weekend will be much cheaper than next week. And it will give a program that, frankly, needs to prove itself to the rest of the conference.
Football Wasn’t Any Better
In December, we wrote a piece on Heartland College Sports about the attendance across the Big 12 Conference in football.
Here’s what we wrote at the time: “Playing at a combination of Children’s Mercy Park and Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas had just 68.01% capacity on the season, with 236,448 fans over the course of six games. Technically, that’s the worst of any team, but it feels a little off-kilter, considering the Jayhawks didn’t have a home stadium.
Houston, on the other hand, does not have that same excuse. The Cougars has just 68.56% capacity on the season and the lowest total of any team in the league, with 164,536 total fans on the year.”
Now football I’ll understand. Houston football has gone 5-13 in league play during two seasons in the Big 12. That’s tough to get behind.
But basketball? This program? There are Final Four expectations in Houston. And this is nothing to take for granted, either. The struggles in football should be a daily reminder to Houston fans how tough it is to win at a high level.
Unfortunately, that appears to have been forgotten by too much of the fan base.
