Relax

[CalallenStang]

I believe we graduate 1,200-1,500 undergraduates per year.

Yes but what % of those stay in Dallas? And for how many years on average do they stay in Dallas?

My gut feel is that our undergrads stay in Dallas a few years, go to grad school elsewhere, and about half come back while the rest settle near their grad schools.

I would guess that of the 40k alumni in the Dallas area figure, only a little over half are undergraduate alumni

[Pony81]

IIRC, our student body is 50/50 in state /out of state. My gues is a lot of of the out of state students return to their home towns to live. May be less so recently with Dallas' strong job growth.

So I would think many of the 40K are grad students and thus have much less allegiance to the school.

[ebrooks11]

And of those that stay in town how many even care about sports? Keep taking slices out of the pie and you get that SMU ratio of grads to attendance is close to that of lower P5 schools. SMU just doesn't have enough alumni to fill the stadium. I have no facts but I would bet in the "U"s case they relied heavily on local t shirt fans to fill their stadium. It was cool to be a fan of them back then.

[CalallenStang]

And of those that stay in town how many even care about sports? Keep taking slices out of the pie and you get that SMU ratio of grads to attendance is close to that of lower P5 schools. SMU just doesn't have enough alumni to fill the stadium. I have no facts but I would bet in the "U"s case they relied heavily on local t shirt fans to fill their stadium. It was cool to be a fan of them back then.

Even when the U was the top program in the country they had a hard time filling the old Orange Bowl except for games against top opposition. Similar to SMU in the 80s