Attendance: By the Numbers

[TidePony]

Average yearly football attendance as reported by the NCAA's website:
SMU
2011 - 20,894
2012 - 21,292
2013 - 18,725
2014 - 21,528
2015 - 21,043
____________________

Liberty - 22,127
TCU - 30,987
U of H - 25,079
Memphis - 24,379
USF - 18,417
Navy - 21,283

2016 - 23,712 (averaged attendance from our 6 home games)
Increase of nearly 13 percent from 2015

Inflated numbers for sure, but still a bit of good news.

[ReedFrawg]

Honest question. Does a coach like Morris see attendance numbers in the low 20k range and thinks that's not awful. We can get that to 30k. Only to show up and find out that actual attendance is 10k...maybe discourages a new coach more quickly than expected??

[Topper]

Honest question. Does a coach like Morris see attendance numbers in the low 20k range and thinks that's not awful. We can get that to 30k. Only to show up and find out that actual attendance is 10k...maybe discourages a new coach more quickly than expected??

Only if they are idiots. Every coach we have had since the death penalty, including Chad, knows the score on our attendance issues. I'm sure that some of them have been vain or narcissistic enough to believe that their personality will cause the seats to fill up, but our attendance issues are well known to anyone who takes the slightest initiative to investigate.

[Insane_Pony_Posse]

How much of an oddity are we as far as attendance?

Are there quite a few Div 1 schools that have similar attendance issues or even worse?

[sbsmith]

How much of an oddity are we as far as attendance?

Are there quite a few Div 1 schools that have similar attendance issues or even worse?

Most of the G5 has attendance issues similar to ours. Ever seen a MACtion game?

[Charleston Pony]

The true comparison is against other AAC programs because that's who we are directly competing against and let's just say we aren't doing all that great...but it's true that the majority of G5 schools don't regularly pack their stadiums. To be fair, you would have to compare private vs public schools because we will have a tough time matching Boise State or even Houston's record. UCF and USF have HUGE student populations so relatively speaking, their attendance is poor and arguably worse than ours, given their recent successes.

[JasonB]

Go back and compare our attendance to TCU in the mid 90s before they started winning, or Houston when they were bad. It is going to take consistent winning seasons to completely rebuild a fan base.

Even in basketball - if we lose now, everyone is gone. If we win for 5 more years and establish ourselves as a program, the fan base will build and stick through the bad times.

[Charleston Pony]

Best thing about our attendance issues (and they have existed since I was at SMU in the early 70's) is that we at least have appropriate size venues now with Ford and the new Moody. If we could get to where we consistently put 5k butts in seats at Moody and 24k in Ford, we will have a decent game day atmosphere but we have to be able to do that regardless of the opponent

[East Coast Mustang]

Will be interested to see what the numbers are next year with no marquee home games

[Rebel10]

Will be interested to see what the numbers are next year with no marquee home games

I don't know but the OOC record will help us get to a bowl game regardless of the attendance.

[smusic 00]

7 home games next year.

If I'm a coach and just realized a 13 percent fan increase I'd be taking that to bill Nichols, not [deleted] about the 6k that aren't there.

[SMUer]

Maybe aim to have a winning record at home too.

[smupony94]

Lots of players thanking fans on Twitter right now. Go show some love back

[Treadway21]

Done. Thx.

[mrydel]

I don't twit. Tell them I said hey.