Lower attendance at UIL championships renews debate on host venues

A lot of banter in the press box and on reporters’ Twitter accounts this weekend was about the lagging attendance numbers at NRG Stadium in Houston after the Class 2A-6A championship games were moved from AT&T Stadium after four seasons due to a conflict with the Cowboys’ schedule.

NRG Stadium’s debut hosting all five classes of championship games fell 94,509 fans off the pace of the 2014 title games in Arlington at AT&T Stadium.

Some thought that AT&T Stadium itself is a tourist attraction that people want to see. Others believe that the high school fan base in the DFW area is better and that people would go see a game even if their team isn’t playing.

University Interscholastic League Athletic Director Dr. Susan Elza, however, isn’t as concerned about the gate numbers as she is about finding the right venue.

Only three stadiums meet the UIL criteria of four dressing rooms, indoors, and turf. Those are AT&T Stadium in Arlington, NRG Stadium in Houston and the Alamodome in San Antonio.

“It’s a debatable topic for some people, but for us we just want to get a great venue and have a great relationship with that venue,” said Elza, who started as UIL AD in August. “In my opinion [gate success] is just not a factor. It’s truly looking at the venues.”

Elza said that she and her staff would start working on future state championship locations for football soon after the 2015 business is cleared.

“We’ve talked about things very briefly, but it will be the early conversations,” Elza said. “Then we’ll give people the opportunity to basically, for lack of a better word, bid on the games.”

Elza didn’t have a good gauge yet whether coaches are in favor of rotating championship sites or are content to have them at the same site year after year, but she was certain that most coaches liked having the games for all classes in the same place.

Coach Gary Joseph of Katy, Jon Kay of Houston North Shore and Austin Westlake coach Todd Dodge, who coached Southlake Carroll to five title games, are all in favor of rotating the sites.

“It’s fair and it all comes out in the wash when you move it around,” said Dodge, whose team lost to North Shore in the Class 6A Division I title game. “You think about that if it’s down here in Houston every year, a team like Canadian will have to drive 599 miles. I would hope that it would move in three-year cycles from Arlington to Houston to San Antonio.”

“I want to throw some love to NRG, it’s been fantastic,” Elza said. “When you change venues, and I’m learning this fresh on the job, there’s a lot of things that the venue has to jump through a lot of hoops on and they have. They’ve met every request for us and it’s been great.”

This story was originally published December 20, 2015 at 8:13 PM with the headline "Lower attendance at UIL championships renews debate on host venues."