Charleston Pony wrote:Easy to blame the administration but "reality" is that there aren't enough people who really care about SMU athletics as evidenced by our poor attendance figures year after year. Yes, SMU alumni can be incredibly privileged and entitled and there are some who might come out if SMU fields teams that win championships and can compete at a top 10 level but not until. There are plenty of P5 programs that are consistently mid level programs and haven't sniffed top 25 status in years that enjoy far more fan support than SMU and yes, I know those are for the most part public schools with much larger student and alumni populations but that is as much a reason for SMU athletics being where they are as anything.
A key difference is that none of these other schools/programs had a lost generation that we did because of the death penalty. We have to do above and beyond what other schools do to get the attendance and attention we want. It's a bit of chicken and the egg but understand where we have been because of the death penalty what needs to drive this is the football program, and it needs to perform at an excellent level on a sustainable basis, to get the eye balls we need. Dallas will support winners. You saw a bit of it in the basketball program, and even though football needs 5x that level, it can be done with much more success. At some point, we can't keep blaming the fans if the football product is sub-par. Has Turner done enough with the power 5 commissioners and positioning SMU? Have we had the best athletic directors that we can? or do most just settle? the answers to some of these questions will point to one person ultimately responsible.