How Does Houston Football Prepare for a Road Game?

While the Cougars have played a road game, it was against cross-town rival Rice, whose stadium is less than 20 minutes away from Houston’s campus. The Coogs beat the Owls pretty handily, maybe benefiting from the game essentially being a neutral-site contest and the familiarity of a home-game-esque week of preparation.

As the Cougars get ready to take their first flight of the season, Fritz said his team is ready for the trip.

“We’re going to handle everything the same as we normally do,” Fritz said. “The only difference will be that we’ll be on a plane for a while. It's going to be a long plane trip, but every time I’ve ever taken a plane trip with a bunch of 18 to 22-year-olds, everybody’s out within the first 10 minutes, so they think it was a short flight and it might have been two hours or whatever it was.”

While taking a trip with 150 of your closest friends to another college town sounds like a good time, Fritz and the team know what the trip is about.

“We don’t want to work them too much before we leave,” Fritz said. “You know, when we get there, it’s a business trip. We want to enjoy each other’s company, but it’s a business trip without question.”

Heading to the West Coast gives the Coogs the latest kickoff time so far this season, with kick scheduled for 9:30 p.m. Central, something that changes things up for the team’s routine.

“We played some night games already and we’ve been staying at a hotel regardless of whether we’re playing at home or on the road,” Fritz said. “We’re staying in Eugene and we’re driving to Corvallis. We’re flying into Eugene and then we’ll drive on over.”

The Oregon State game is the last nonconference bout of the season for Houston, and the last contest before the Coogs take on the ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders at home.