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Just double or triple the student body size . SMU is too small these days.

15233 actual butts in seats with most of the students sitting or laying out on beach towels in the
end-zone when they had a seat in the student section

My 8-9k prediction was spot on.
Maybe 200 students. Dunno. Can't figure that one out. Same as it ever was.

Nope, I saw Longview had 8000 last night with Tyler Lee at Lobo Stadium which holds 9000 is a
similar subset of Ford complete with hill

Go troll somewhere else

somehow it feels like we are back to that same point when SMU beat UCF in front of a disappointing crowd and JJ checked out. Hopefully Chad hangs around long enough to complete the job here but who could blame him for tiring of getting so little support

June was an old and immature dude who thought he was the greatest coach ever. Morris is young and upcoming coach who actually is a decent coach with great potential. I think Chad may be disappointed but his fuel is to make his resume look great for the next step: took a 1-11 team that couldn't beat UNt and turned it around to 7-5 or better hopefully in 3 years (hopefully more). I think while he's disappointed he's not surprised. Again, we were 1-11 team which in our best with JJ was a competitor of G5s. We never had a strong fan base to rebuild. I'm sure he knows that it's going to take multiple P5 and post season wins before seeing butts in the stands.

That was just sad today...for any college football team. It's no wonder we can't hold onto a top notch coach. If I were a recruit there today it would be easy to dismiss SMU very quickly. Just shows it doesn't matter the product we have on the field and has everything to do with who we are playing

We had some big-time recruits that simply won't give us a second look

certainly not a knock on anyone who cares enough about SMU athletics to visit this site, but let's face it...there just isn't much interest in SMU football so all we can do is enjoy the ride while Morris & Co have us trending upward. I have to believe Chad would like to return to an environment like the one he enjoyed at Clemson with great athletes, packed stadium and a chance to compete for a National Championship and I fully expect him to leave when he sees the right program in Texas that gives him that opportunity. Baylor was not it. I could see him holding out for the A$M job, especially with one child there already.

I agree. With our obvious improvement this year and lots of big jobs about to open we need to just enjoy this and hope the next guy can keep it rolling...hopefully at some point attendance improves, but it isn't going to change anytime soon.


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17,237 was the announced attendance.

ALEX LIFESON wrote:17,237 was the announced attendance.

watching on TV from afar it looked like about 10k butts in seats but what really hurts is that most of the TV shots show the empty visitor's side

A lot of people moved over to the home side to be in the shade side.

I don't expect our attendance to markedly improve, it is what it is. SMU has ALWAYS struggled in this department, even during the halcyon days of the early 1980s. And the fact is that the schedules we play post-SWC hold very little interest for non-die hard fans. On top of that, interest in college football and attendance generally around the country are all on long-term downward trends. How is little SMU, one of the smallest schools in D-1A, supposed to buck all of those factors and start filling Ford every weekend.

But honestly, at this point I wonder how much it matters. College football has peaked, and is now on the long downward slide. Most athletic departments lose money and it costs a fortune to run a D-1A football program. The networks are choking on hugely inflated unsustainable TV contracts at a time when ratings are sinking and people are cutting the cord at an ever-increasing rate. And all the power and money is increasingly controlled by a few huge state schools.

I read somewhere I think that nationally youth football participation is down by something like 30% over the past decade, and still declining. Moms all around America are terrified that football will make their kids end up like Muhammad Ali. People are not attending live games because it's expensive, a logistical pain in the butt, and the darn games take way too long. The new generation of college students has less interest in attending games than previous generations. What is college football even going to look like in 10 or 20 years? Is it worth it for all these schools to continue to pour money down this sinkhole in a misguided effort to "stay relevant" (whatever that means)? I'm really begining to wonder.

Just one PF's point of view. I'm sure many will strongly disagree.

I think that's [deleted] at least as far as P5 schools

The only reason NCAA attendance is going down is because they count 129 teams rather than about 95 they did 3-4 decades ago. In fact, the attendance at P5 schools has grown exponentially over the last 5 decades I've watched College Football. Certainly attendance at Tech, A&M, UT, Baylor, TCU has skyrocketed. For one thing most of their stadiums are considerably larger. Those schools couldn't fill their much smaller stadiums back then. Now most of those schools have sold out their season ticket allotment in at least a few recent years.