BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Navigating a crowded state and finding early success
Houston’s biggest challenge is a two-part challenge that feeds into each other.
The biggest challenge for Houston will ultimately be what it has always been. The Cougars are in a crowded state for football, but especially for FBS football. As of July 1, 2023, there are 13 programs that are now at the FBS level that are located in the state of Texas.
While it is a crowded state, Houston does have the advantage of being in an immediate area that only consists of themselves and Rice. However, if you look at a 150-mile radius around the city of Houston, you would quickly find the Cougars overlapping with Texas and Texas A&M, and distance isn’t going to stop other programs in the state like Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech from recruiting the southeastern part of Texas either. Not to mention, the top programs from the entire country love to dip into the Lonestar State and steal talent away from Texas schools.
Ultimately, what can Houston do as a program to help stand out from the rest of the schools? Is it even possible for them to do so? It may not be possible to truly separate themselves from the rest of the Lonestar State, but while that may not make or break the program, our second challenge very well could.
That second challenge is finding early success.
In a crowded state but also in a conference with plenty of programs vying in hopes of becoming the class of the new Big 12, the Cougars can not afford poor showings in its first few years.
While struggles in 2023 wouldn’t be shocking, Dana Holgorsen and his program could not afford those struggles to carry into 2024, 2025, and beyond. At least not significant struggles.
If the Cougars struggle early on in their Big 12 tenure for multiple seasons, it could quickly become a very tough rut for the program to get out of. Sustained struggles on the field will likely lead to lesser recruiting classes and instability in the program from top to bottom. The transition from Group of Five to Power Five is challenging enough, and it can take multiple seasons to get a program to where it desires to be in the grand scheme of its new conference; doing so with instability would make that challenge all the much tougher.
The program recruits at a quality level but not an elite level. Their recruiting classes often land between 50 and 60 in the recruiting industry’s team recruiting class rankings. The program has shown the ability to land high-level talent. According to 247Sports, the program since 2000 has landed 11 four-star recruits, with 10 of them coming since 2012. Since the 2022 recruiting cycle, the program has landed five four-star prospects, including LB Maurice Williams Jr, as part of their 2024 recruiting class.
It’s certainly a strong start for the Cougars, but they will need to continue to find a way to carry that success onto the field. If the program cannot find its footing early in its Big 12 tenure, those recruiting classes could quickly dip in quality.
Next, we lay out reasonable expectations.