For Willie Fritz and Houston football, timing is everything (2024)

HOUSTON — Willie Fritz has done just about everything a college football coach can do in the last 42 years.

He has won national championships, conference championships, a New Year’s Six bowl and something called the Mineral Water Bowl. In his rise up the sport’s hierarchy, from junior college to Division II to the FCS and FBS, Fritz has been a head coach, a coordinator, a strength coach and a trainer. He has taped ankles, lined fields and driven buses. “Don’t be afraid to dig a ditch,” he often says.

But there’s one thing the 64-year-old Fritz hasn’t done, and it’s why he’s now at the University of Houston.

“I did aspire to coach at the highest level of collegiate football,” Fritz said. “That’s what drew me to this position.”

Like Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, Kansas’ Lance Leipold and Kansas State’s Chris Klieman, Fritz is a proven winner at the sport’s lower levels. But a decade of FBS success, including a 23-4 run the last two years at Tulane, paved the way for a power-conference opportunity.

For Fritz and Houston, timing was everything. The Cougars, who just completed their first season in the Big 12, returned to a power conference just ahead of landscape changes that might close the door on other Group of 5 programs looking to make the jump. Fritz wanted a chance to show he can do there what he has done everywhere else: win.

Together, they hope to prove they belong.

“It had to be the right fit,” Fritz said. “This felt like it has all the ingredients to be successful at the Power 4 level.”

As Fritz sought his next challenge, Houston checked a lot of boxes. The school has spent nearly $300 million on football facility upgrades in the last decade: 10-year-old TDECU Stadium, a six-year-old indoor practice facility and a football operations building, which will open next summer. The number of strength coaches, nutritionists and recruiting staffers is double what Fritz had at Tulane.

UH’s recruiting footprint is as good as there is. The Greater Houston area had nearly 100 players sign with FBS programs last year. And Fritz has ties to the region: He coached at Willis High School, at Blinn College and at Sam Houston, all within 80 miles of the city. Plus, his daughters live in the Houston area.

Fritz’s predecessor, Dana Holgorsen, ruffled some feathers last year when he pointed out that UH was behind its Big 12 brethren in some areas (work on the football operations building didn’t break ground until Holgorsen’s final month on the job). Fritz, who has had to stretch a budget, offers a different perspective.

“When I was at Blinn, it was me and two other guys who coached the whole team,” he said. “We did the academics, lined the fields, washed jocks, we did everything. … Now I’ve got experts in everything. I’ve never had a nutritionist. Now I have two of them!”

What the Cougars are missing is consistency. In the last 20 years, they’ve enjoyed moments of relevance under Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin, Tom Herman and Holgorsen, each recruiting high-quality talent and pushing the program forward. But they haven’t sustained it. Briles, Sumlin and Herman all left for Power 5 jobs; Holgorsen was fired in November after the program regressed his final two seasons.

Fritz builds sustainable winners. At Blinn, he took a program that had five wins in its previous three seasons to 39-5 and two national junior college titles in four seasons. At Central Missouri, he guided the Mules to 11 winning seasons in 13 years and their first Division II playoff appearance. At Sam Houston, the Bearkats made consecutive FCS title game appearances in Fritz’s four seasons.

At Tulane, Fritz inherited a team that was a combined 6-18 the two seasons before he arrived. He took the Green Wave to the first of three consecutive bowls in Year 3, won a conference title and beat USC in the Cotton Bowl in 2022, and won 11 games with a return trip to the conference title game last season.

The key to all that success? Flexibility and consistency.

“He adapts his program to the talent on the field instead of expecting the talent on the field to fit what he knows,” said former Tulane athletic director Troy Dannen, who’s now at Nebraska. “He’s gone from running option to running the pistol. When he had the talent to do what he wanted to do, that’s what he did.

“It’s just, ‘What do I have to do to win?’ That’s his secret sauce. And a lot of coaches aren’t able to do that, because they know ‘this.’ He’s just the opposite.”

Shane Meyer, Fritz’s longtime director of operations, said Fritz’s “Groundhog Day” approach — from his demeanor to the daily schedule — enables teams to flourish.

“There really is no panic button,” Meyer said. “Whether you’re 10-0 or 0-10, no matter if we’re getting ready for the New England Patriots or we’re getting ready for a middle school down the street, the preparation is the same.”

Meyer said most coaches who have worked with him can probably recite Fritz’s plan to win: Take care of the football, control the running game, have great special teams, be a disciplined football team and finish.

“Each day that you come in this building, you’re going to know exactly what’s expected,” receivers coach Derrick Sherman said. “There’s very little gray area. Show up, get your job done and figure out how you can add more value.”

Fritz’s local ties played a key role in his move. Recruiting in Texas is insular, and winning over the state’s influential high school coaches is critical.

The staff’s early efforts have earned praise from the locals. In The Athletic’s recent anonymous recruiting survey of Houston-area coaches, multiple coaches lauded Fritz and his staff for their visibility on the recruiting trail.

“When he came here, it was the first time I’ve ever seen an (FBS), let alone a Power 5 coach come by himself,” one of the surveyed coaches said of Fritz. “Usually those guys are escorted around just for show. He sat in my office for an hour, took my recruiting list, went through it the way an assistant would and made notes. We traded some ideas on stuff. It was super impressive.”

Fritz will prioritize Houston and the state of Texas and incorporate Louisiana as well, a proven blueprint used successfully by previous UH coaches.

“I didn’t get on a plane during (winter) recruiting,” Fritz said. “I drove every place.”

Houston’s ability to recruit, develop and retain talent will determine its Big 12 success. At Tulane, Fritz and his staff showed a knack for identifying low-ranked recruits who became key players and, in some instances, NFL Draft picks.

Of the 14 Fritz-era Green Wave players currently in the NFL, only one was rated higher than a three-star as a prospect. Twelve of them ranked lower than No. 1,400 in the 247Sports Composite player rankings, and seven reported five or fewer scholarship offers (Tulane was the only FBS offer for three of them, per 247).

The Green Wave won the AAC in 2022 and played for the title in 2023 despite never finishing higher than fourth in the conference’s recruiting or team talent composite rankings during Fritz’s tenure.

With proximity to one of the largest talent pools in the country, “we can build a sustainable program that can compete year in, year out,” Houston athletic director Chris Pezman said.

But first, Fritz must get the 2024 Cougars in order.

Getting the roster right will be an ongoing project, especially after Houston lost multiple key players in the transfer portal to power-conference mainstays, including starting receivers Matthew Golden (Texas) and Sam Brown (Miami), defensive lineman Ja’maree Caldwell (Oregon) and cornerback Isaiah Hamilton (Ole Miss).

Portal losses are typical following coaching changes, but they meant Fritz had to mine the portal more than he’d like, bringing in roughly two dozen transfers for Year 1. His son, Houston director of player personnel Wes Fritz, said in the 2025 classes and beyond, “we’re going to try and be primarily high school recruiting and focused on developing.”

For the current roster, spring football was Willie Fritz’s chance to set the foundation. “Teaching guys how to practice the way I want them to practice. Teaching the coaches how I want them to coach the guys, technique, fundamentally, schematically … You’ve got to get it up and running before I can start doing some other things.”

Small habits are paramount. Punctuality is a must. So is positivity. During breaks in practice, players dap each other up, high-five, pat each other on the back or share some other lighthearted greeting. That’s an intentional emphasis; Fritz read about a study that showed NBA teams that had the most positive physical interaction won more.

“Coaches don’t do a great job of teaching guys how to be a great teammate,” Fritz said. “That’s not natural. It’s more ‘I wanna dog the opponent,’ rather than pick up my teammate and build him up. So we practice all the time with our guys.”

“Some guys may think it’s corny, but it actually gets the vibe going,” offensive line coach Eman Naghavi said.

Starting quarterback Donovan Smith said the team is doing more team bonding outings and community service, which has also had a positive effect.

“That’s something we were lacking a little bit last year,” he said.

Fritz is also incorporating a long-held daily habit: carrying a voice recorder. He picked it up after seeing Bill Snyder do it during a late-1990s visit to a Kansas State practice. If Fritz spots something that needs critiquing, he’ll hit Record and dictate a note. Afterward, he’ll transcribe everything onto paper to share in the daily 4 p.m. staff meeting.

In Houston’s first spring practice, Fritz took 67 voice notes. By the 10th practice, it was down to 16. Progress.

Why not just use the voice memo app on his smartphone? Fritz said he doesn’t bring the device out to practice so that he’s not tempted to look at it.

“I never bring my phone to a staff meeting,” he said. “When I’m meeting with a recruit, I turn it off. When I’m watching film, I turn it upside down or turn it off. The phone does not own me. I’m a little old school.”

Another habit Fritz developed in his early months on the job: venturing over to the Fertitta Center to watch Kelvin Sampson’s nationally ranked basketball team.

Houston men’s basketball was once a bottom-feeder, spending more than two decades in irrelevance following the Phi Slama Jama teams before Sampson revived the Cougars. Today, Fritz sees the sold-out arena, the vibrant atmosphere, the hard-nosed team that scratches and claws for everything.

“You’re like, ‘Wow, we can do this in football, too,’” Fritz said.

Houston has been relevant in football before. In the 20 years the Cougars played in the Southwest Conference, they won the same number of conference titles as Texas (four), second-most in that span to Texas A&M’s six, and finished in the AP top 15 five times.

After the SWC’s mid-1990s breakup, UH suffered long-lasting competitive, financial and reputational consequences. But there have been flashes of what could be during the last two decades. The Cougars’ dream, as school president Renu Khator put it during Fritz’s introduction, is to “reclaim what is rightfully ours: to be a powerhouse athletic program, which was robbed from us 28 years ago.”

Khator, Pezman and board of regents chair Tilman Fertitta — the trio who made the hire — believe Fritz will lead them there. Pezman predicts he’ll retire as the Cougars’ coach after leading them to new heights.

“The things that I know have been successful in this state, particularly with high school coaches around recruiting and the development of players, that’s what he does,” Pezman said. “I know he is the answer.”

After going 4-8 last season, it will take time to become a Big 12 title contender in the league’s new era. “I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight,” said quarterbacks coach Shawn Bell, who was part of Baylor’s 2021 Big 12 title team. “The first thing this program needed was Willie Fritz. He’s won everywhere he’s been. He’s going to win here.”

There are also financial hurdles the school must clear as it tries to scale up its budget to its new conference peers.

But it’s nothing Fritz hasn’t overcome before. Those around him have seen it.

Fritz’s chance to win at the highest level, one he has long waited for, is here. He believes Houston can be a nationally prominent program.

“We’ve got the pieces to he puzzle,” he said. “We’ve just got to put them in place now.”

— The Athletic’s Mitch Sherman contributed reporting.

(Photo: Troy Taormina / USA Today)