Tilman Fertitta Is Pumped About Willie Fritz’s First Year Success, Urges UH Fans to Support Football More, Help Build a Clear Playoff Future

Tilman Fertitta returns a call after 11 pm on Saturday night because he’s excited by what Willie Fritz is doing, about the future possibilities he’s opening up in his first year as the University of Houston’s football coach. Fertitta watched his Houston Rockets almost pull off an extraordinary comeback, erasing every bit of a 31-point deficit only to lose to the Golden State Warriors in overtime earlier in the night. But the University of Houston Board of Regents chairman is thinking about his chosen school, about what Fritz and his ever battlers did in the rain to topple No. 17 Kansas State. To already have three Big 12 wins, more games than UH won in conference with a much more talented team all of last season, with three games remaining.

“It’s great,” Fertitta tells PaperCity. “To be 4-5 right now with the schedule we had. . . We didn’t have a FCS team we were playing, a level below us, like so many of your Power 5 schools. This year, we had UNLV and Rice and Oklahoma (in non-conference). And we catch UNLV on a year when they can beat anybody.

“To be 4-5. We couldn’t hope to be any further along than that. I would love for the fans, and Willie, and the players, to win two out of next three and somehow become bowl eligible. And obviously, they’re sure capable of it.”

Willie Fritz and his coaching staff have Houston winning despite having the deck staged against them in many ways. For this UH team to win, it must walk a tight rope and follow one script. This is not a team that can win a variety of ways. It’s a limited offensive group. These Cougars must rely on their stout defense, one of the best punters in football, limiting mistakes on offense and just sticking around like the world’s most persistent mosquito. . . refusing to stop buzzing around until they’ve given themselves a chance to make the big play that swings things.

Kansas State gets 21 first downs to UH’s 10 and out gains the Cougars by nearly 100 yards — and trudges out of a soggy TDECU Stadium with their College Football Playoff  visions all but washed away.

It’s not a miracle. It’s Fritz Magic.

“Willie was a winner wherever he was,” Tilman Fertitta says. “Am I surprised? No, I’m not surprised. I thought he would figure it out. Even this year. Remember by the time he got there (to UH), because he had a championship game, a lot of the players were already gone for the semester.

“So he didn’t even get to know a lot of these guys until just seven, eight months ago. We’re excited.”

It’s like Fritz, defensive coordinator Shiel Wood and offensive coordinator Kevin Barbay have to come up with a New York Giants 1991 Super Bowl game plan, one that somehow defies the odds, every week. And they’re doing it.

“Willie was a winner wherever he was. Am I surprised? No, I’m not surprised. I thought he would figure it out. Even this year.” — Tilman Fertitta on UH football coach Willie Fritz

It’d be easy to see this success with so little and automatically assume that Willie Fritz in a Big 12 that seems wide open many years will give the University of Houston a chance to compete for the College Football Playoffs in no time. Give Fritz a few recruiting cycles and viola. . .  instant contender?

Fertitta cautions against that kind of thinking. UH’s billionaire believer has no doubt Fritz is a good enough coach to make that happen. But Tilman knows Fritz will need much more Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) dollars to turn the vision into a reality on solid footing.

“Willie’s got to get the support from supporters of UH and we need to make sure we give him all the support we can at the university because college athletics is different today,” Fertitta tells PaperCity. “And part of the parity of all of this, why different teams are winning, is because of NIL. And players can get recruited every year and go from school to school.”

As heartening as the 24-19 win over Kansas State is, the announced crowd of little more than 23,000 is disappointing. Even with the rain and the lightning delay that pushed kickoff back an hour. It’s another sign of how fake manufactured buzz can never come close to equaling the real thing.

This Houston football team deserves better than the world’s smallest field rush after an upset of a legit College Football Playoff contender (two Big 12 teams figure to make the 12-team playoff field). Big play creating safety A.J. Haulcy and defensive lineman Keith Cooper Jr. could play for any defense in the country. Linebacker Michael Batton drips desire with every play — and he changed this game with his pursuit (11 tackles) and interception in the final two minutes.

Batton loves football so much that he went to three different small schools (including Nassau Community College) to keep playing it, before finally getting this Power 4 chance at Houston. You bet Michael Batton is going to bring it every single play. All of Fritz’s fanatical battlers are.

Even Willie Fritz coaches this game with two broken fingers (from a sideline collision the game before). That doesn’t stop this 64-year-old coaching lifer from dapping up many of the high school recruits on the sidelines before this game. Fritz’s enthusiasm is contagious. So is the confidence building.

“Being in this league six years right now, we’ve beaten teams that are better than us because we have better fundamentals and techniques,” Kansas State coach Chris Klieman says in his postgame press conference. “Today, we got beat by a team that was pretty capable, comparable to us.

“That’s as good a defense, other than BYU, that we’ve played this year. Those guys have dudes up front.”

The Willie Fritz Mandate

This Houston team isn’t fooling anyone. Though Barbay’s version of The Philly Special with receiver Joseph Manjack IV passing to quarterback Zeon Chriss stood out as a fun, much needed departure. But this offensively limited UH team needs Chriss to make plays with his legs and next level speed to win games. Every opponent Houston plays knows that now. Kansas State certainly knew. The Wildcats built their defensive game plan around containing Fritz’s running quarterback.

And Chriss still rips off a 41-yard game-winning touchdown run in the slop. Knocking down the highest-ranked opponent Houston has beaten in seven seasons.

“In football, you’ve got to make big plays,” Fertitta says. “You have to have players who are playmakers. And I think a lot of players on the team have stepped up. And guys are making plays.

“We’re going to recruit better. And we’re going to do better at NIL. And we’re going to continue to improve the program.”

Fertitta has been talking with Fritz regularly throughout this season, getting a feel for what UH’s program shifting coach needs most. This longtime believer in the power of the university of the fourth largest city in America is as involved and invested with his Coogs as ever. While others focus on auxiliary issues, some of which may be important in their own right, the Fortune 500 tycoon knows NIL is the real impact maker and needle mover in this new era of college football.

Fertitta always knows his numbers. For every business he’s involved in. And in college football, the new numbers are clear and largely unforgiving — a top quarterback costs $1 million to $1.5 million to land. Especially a proven one coming from the transfer portal. Impact players at other positions don’t come cheap either.

Fritz Magic should gives UH football plenty of hope. Even contending for a College Football Playoff berth out of a Big 12 that’s largely lacking superpower football programs (with the possible exception of increasingly bigger and bigger money BYU) in a few more seasons seems within reach.

But Fritz Magic cannot do it alone. That will take plenty of Cougar bucks too.