Any Band Members Out There? Please Answer this ?...

[tmustangp]

I have been goin to smu games for years and years.. I just noticed something the other day when i was disgusted at teh play and disgusted of how crappy the atmoshere is at Moody.

Of all things that are awful at the game I started to count the band members. Then I thought to myself and asked my buddies..
Why is only half the band at the bball games? I know there are probably twice as many band members who come to the football games. Why doesn't the entire band show up to the bball games?
Hell the band is the only reason there is any cheering at all at the games anyways, so what If the entire band was there.. There is plenty of room for them on those wooden bleachers.

Can a band member or past band member please explain this to me?
Sometimes there is only one home game a week, just like football, So why is the entire band not at the bball games?

[couch 'em]

I don't think there were even 60 people in the band this year, so if you have 30 people at bball games then you have more than half the band.

[SMUPhil]

There's a few reasons:

-In football season, you have a 12-15 person drumline, but in basketball, you have a single drumset player.

-It's easier for members to schedule for 6-8 Saturday football games than 20-25 bball games (remember the band does both men's and women's home games) that fall on all different nights of the week. In the WAC, the schedules were pretty steady with most bball games on Thursday or Saturday night, but the CUSA schedule seems to have games at random days of the week. So when you have a wednesday night class from 6:30-9:30, there goes a few games.

It's hard to tell someone at the beginning of the year, "Ok, the schedule hasn't been released yet, but from November to March, I'm going to need you to be available for about 20-30 games, and they could be any day of the week, with varying tipoff times." I'd say that's why most people have a hard time scheduling around it.

All in all, would it be nice to have more people there? Sure, but keep in mind that many schools don't even have what we do. UCF has like a 300-person member band, but they didn't even have a single person at the Friday night women's game I went to last week. TCU pays members by the game to go to women's bball.

[redraidersweetheart]

In defense of the Mustang Band, most schools don't have many band members at basketball games. The Goin' Band has close to 500 members and maybe only about 30 in the "Court Jesters" that plays at basketball games.