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Sports

UH fans need a lesson

Silent Assassin 

Ronnie Turner

The Houston men's basketball team has endured its share of up and downs this season, but still has a chance to do something special over these final seven regular season games.

With a 13-10 record, the Cougars, no doubt, need a miraculous finish to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Yet, there's always a remote possibility that the Cougars could run the table, win the Conference USA Tournament and waltz into the Big Dance.

This sounds crazy at the moment, but since fans have no way of knowing, they'll be enticed to show up in full force for each of the team's four remaining home games, starting with tonight's game against South Alabama.

But don't waste your breath. It's not going to happen tonight or any other night this season. 

Oh, there will be the usual 2,000 or 3,000-odd dedicated fans who show up tonight to support the team. The other "fans" will either listen to the game on the radio, track it on the Internet, blog about it on the various UH message boards, or even worse ? watch another game on TV.

UH Athletics officials have tried all season to get the latter "fans" to actually attend the games. They've passed out flyers, sent out e-mails to students, offered special promotions and on Tuesday, an opinion column by head coach Tom Penders ran in The Daily Cougar calling students to come support the team in the final four home games. They've done everything but get down on their knees and beg. 

None of their efforts have succeeded in selling out Hofheinz, which leads me to the conclusion that most UH "fans" simply don't care enough about their own team to show up. But they'll be quick to criticize anyone who throws up attendance numbers in their faces.

They claim they know the importance of fan turnout on the Cougars' performance, but continue to be no-shows on game day. And because of that, the Cougars find themselves in a lot of home games that otherwise might have been played at neutral sites. Yeah, that's just how poor the attendance has been.

Personally, I couldn't care less whether the Cougars draw a good crowd for tonight's game; after all, it's not my team.

However, I still find it odd that most fans have decided to take the same approach.

Send comments to dcsports@mail.uh.edu