Name SMU's Collegiate Allies

[Southland]

I'd say UNT should definitely start to worry; but not about SMU...

<A HREF="http://collegefootballnews.com/2003/Columnists/RC/Attendance_IA.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://collegefootballnews.com/2003/Columnists/RC/Attendance_IA.htm</A>

[MeanGreenGem]

The schools who should probably start worrying are those who will no longer be able to count total tickets sold and IF that had been the case in the listing of schools in your link, would you venture to guess how many of those such schools may have dipped under 15K (right along with the UH Coogs)?

I do have a couple of acquaintances in the DFW sports media and all I am going on is what they tell me about SMU's real butts in seats issues over the last 2 or 3 home games of the last 2 years at Ford. I suppose I got verification on their opinion of the real attendance at SMU on one of 2 of your messge boards, that is, when some of your very own realistic and "no nonsense" SMU posters have posted with grave concern about some of those actual 5,000 attendance games at Ford being reported as 18,000. The latter attendance numbers have been annually showing up in your numbers your school obviously reports to the NCAA as shown in any recent lists of all 117 schools, but after this year, the NCAA will use your 5,000 attendance numbers that your fellow alums have expressed a great concern on how that will undoubtedly cause SMU to dip under the magic 15K per home game average it takes to stay in NCAA D1-A.

None of us are setting the woods on fire in attendance although I like UNT's growing reservoir we can pull new fans from; but I don't think any D1-A school is really doing much to brag about until you average 30K per game, which none of the 3 D1-A schools in DFW do).

BUT........I think there are some very nervous people on your campus over your eventually having to report actual attendance numbers beginning in 2004--no smack intended.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Southland:
<B>I'd say UNT should definitely start to worry; but not about SMU...

<A HREF="http://collegefootballnews.com/2003/Columnists/RC/Attendance_IA.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://collegefootballnews.com/2003/Columnists/RC/Attendance_IA.htm</A>

</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>



[This message has been edited by MeanGreenGem (edited 06-20-2003).]

[Charleston Pony]

"grave concerns" about our attendance? I hope you don't attribute those "concerns" to me. Yes, I've posted that I'm reasonably sure SMU has reported "tickets sold" when reporting attendance, but I have no concerns whatsoever that we will meet the 15k figure. Just scheduling two quality home games each year and drawing 25k for each of them gets the job done. With Okie St and TCU coming in this year, we have those 2 games. That means we only have to average 10k actual attendance for our WAC games and we will have no problem doing that, especially with Fresno, Boise, UTEP & Rice coming in this year. If/when we start winning, the 15k figure will be no contest...but until then, if you want to come out to Ford for the 4th quarter of our games, you can go on boasting about how we have only 4-5,000 actual butts in seats. That's about how many remained for the 4th quarter of the Navy game last year (the only game I attended and can attest to), although I'd say about 22-24,000 of an announced 26,000 were there at kickoff.

[Southland]

Mean Green, question not smack... does your "neutral game" at Arkansas count as a home game? Would make all the difference in the world for your attendance. If not, it is going to be very close...

What your friends at the Belo Corporation aren't counting on are the thousands of tickets we would give away (Russ Potts style) if we were ever in trouble. We're not in trouble, hence we haven't fired up the Methodist church buses just yet...

...The only sparsely populated games are the ones against the western WAC teams. We won't be playing those anymore beginning the 2005-2006 school year.

As for this year, we have Oklahoma State, UTEP, Boise, Fresno, Rice and TCU at home... we're not concerned about clearing 18,000, let alone 15k...

[Pegasus]

MeanGreen, your marathon post as well as the other nts posters are becoming a bore. Your OBSESSION with SMU is as obvious as it is PATHETIC.

[MeanGreenGem]

No, not really, if you would notice, most of our posts are just merely responses to some SMU'er still dwelling in the Neanderthal age & who go back a long, long time in SMU athletic history.

Actually, I find many of your SMU posters to be a breath of fresh air, but they are the ones who have accepted the SWC split, cut their losses and have moved on. TCU did that almost immediately after Day 1 of the SWC Split and now they have positive results to show for it and the Horned Frog's attitude of turning their lemons into lemonade.

Pathetic describes those who have very unrealistic goals for SMU, like uh, Big 12 aspirations?!?!? Obesession describes those in Mean Green Country who think UNT must schedule SMU or bust! That group is very far few, between and really hardly exists as the Mean Green are (quite frankly) doing as good as we've ever done football-wise without SMU on our schedule.

UNT doesn't really feel picked on at all with this private school/public school debate. One only has to look at the history of most of the ex SWC private schools ongoing attitudes toward most any Texas public university (except the 2 chairmen of the board public flagships universities, of course). But one only has to look back at how even Texas Tech and Houston had to basically genuflect, bow down and kiss the rings of your schools to even get a consideration and a vote for their admission into the SWC. (Of course, the SWC privates being persuaded with some gentle prodding by UT and TAMU types to insure some of you would change your attitudes & subsequently your votes).

In hindsight, most in Mean Green Country are more than overjoyed that UNT's Hayden Fry never succeeded in getting us in the SWC because of how we see how its implosion has affected many of you post SWC split with some of your attitudes and (in a few cases) caused a few of your elect to really bare their derriers' for the whole state of Texas to observe.

In closing, this very post is also just a response to your most kind words toward the University of North Texas.

Peace out...
............................................


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Pegasus:
<B>MeanGreen, your marathon post as well as the other nts posters are becoming a bore. Your OBSESSION with SMU is as obvious as it is PATHETIC.</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Horseradish]

There are 2 problems with your reasoning, Southland. 1) SMU already gives away thousands and thousands of tickets for almost every game, with the exception of games like Texas Tech and Ok State that sell reasonably well on their own. The vast majority of them go unused. The actual use rate is about the same as grocery store coupons. 2) tickets that are given away dont count towards the 15,000 minimum attendance. Tickets have to be sold for at least 1/3rd of the price of the games most expensive ticket to count towards the attendance minimum.

I know someone is going to ask for my source on this, so to head off the inevitable, it comes from Shawn Heilbron, SMU's marketing director, and Brett Barnett, when he was still the ticket office manager.

Lastly, why are you saying that we wont be playing the Western WAC schools anymore? why are you so certain about that, as if it were already a done deal?