Jim Nantz just donated one million dollars of his own money to the University of Houston’s Nantz Leadership Society in an emotional talk to university supporters, PaperCity has learned. Nantz told the 400 people who pledged support to the new leadership society that bears his family name on Wednesday evening that he felt he needed to show leadership and lead with his own support of UH.
“I had great parents, they did a lot for me,” Nantz tells PaperCity. “And they were there with me (in spirit) when I stood in front of that group of 400 people who believed in the Nantz Leadership Society. I felt their presence there. I felt their pull. Because they’re in my heart all the time.
“I felt their presence there encouraging me to lead. That’s all I know.”
Nantz’s parents — Jim Nantz Jr., a former college football player, and Doris Nantz, who UH’s football press box is named after — are often in the legendary voice of CBS’s thoughts. He had his sister Nancy Hockaday with him at the event at University of Houston’s new $130 million football operations center on this Wednesday night and she marveled over seeing the Nantz name up in lights in TDECU Stadium in the display promoting the Nantz Leadership Society.
University of Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson left an event he was having at his house to be able to spend some time with Nantz on campus. Sampson certainly isn’t surprised by anything Nantz does for the university he loves.
“Jim’s special man,” Sampson tells PaperCity. “We talk about the great Cougars. And great people, great alumni. . . he’s just normal.
“He’s one of us. And I’ve always appreciated him for that.”
A number of the University of Houston supporters who donated to the still new Nantz Leadership Society stopped Nantz to emotionally thank him for the donation and everything he’s done for their school. Jim Nantz tells PaperCity that the leadership society is in part funding a success fund for UH athletes.
It is Nantz’s dad who first built his son’s love of the university of the city they moved to and embraced like no other. “I know our folks would have loved it,” Nancy Hockaday, Nantz’s sister, says, the video promoting the Nantz Leadership Society in the lobby of the new football center playing behind her. “They loved UH. And they would have loved to see this.”
To Nantz, who’s been to every NFL team facility there is as he covers the league, this is something next level. Something that he feels UH should be proud of.
“I’ve been to all 32 (NFL team) facilities and they’re stunning,” Nantz says. “But there’s nothing like this.”
This new Nantz Leadership Society being tied into the new football operations center with the lobby video and other touches is somehow fitting, speaking to UH’s larger ambitions as it heads towards its centennial. This Nantz Leadership Society push is already reaching higher with the early support reaching levels the school hasn’t seen in other new ventures.
“It’s been so impactful,” UH senior associate athletic director for special projects Katina Jackson says. “The number of new major gifts we have gotten, we have set an all-time record. We have people that were in a gift who increased their gifts because they wanted to be at a higher level and a bigger part of the Nantz Society.”
Jim Nantz has always been great at building up friends.
But Hello Friends is not what Nantz wrote in the inscription of the football that UH football coach Willie Fritz asked him to sign. Instead Nantz wrote: “Thank you for bringing back a tradition unlike any other — Winning.”
“And that’s what we’re going to do,” Nantz says.
This is certainly a winning night for UH, setting up Fritz’s second season, which begins Thursday night against Stephen F. Austin. University of Houston chancellor Renu Khator, new UH chairman of the board of regents Jack Moore, Sampson, Fritz, athletic director Eddie Nuñez, Carl Lewis and first-year women’s basketball coach Matthew Mitchell are all there, all pushing for the same vision of the future.
“I think where we are today is stretching even my vision when I came here,” Khator tells PaperCity. “All the constructive going on is just part of our evolution, our transformation. . . There’s a number of projects going on right now and they all finish within two years, a year and a half.
“We’re going to see a beautiful transformed campus by centennial year.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.