Proposal To Encourage Alumni Involvement.

[Stallion]

the key to fostering alumni involvement at SMU is to rekindle the experiences the alumni had at SMU. Each fraternity, sorority, school and organization should be encouraged to fund a clearly marked alumni tent so that alumni who are not closely connected to the SMU scene today could have a place to meet old friends, network and reconnect to SMU. This could also be beneficial to the organization as they constantly seek financial support from alumni. I know certain schools do this today but the organization is haphazard. The alumni who only rarely attends games but is VITALLY needed for the return of attendance probably has no idea where these tents are. Then you could arrange each tent in some logical order and provide maps or posters delineating the location of each group. The Ticket office could provide special seating arrangement for those groups who were interested. Rekindling the shared personal experiences among these groups which are often much stronger than to the university at large could be quite success and I think good for each organization as well.

[Pony_Fan]

None of this is going to do any good sitting here on a message board but a good idea...

[BringBackThePonies03]

You should present these ideas to the Athletic Department.

[LawSchoolPony]

The Athletic Dept. should take a long, hard look at the Grove at Ole Miss...after all, its where Turner got the idea for the Boulevard anyway. There are a lot of things Ole Miss does to foster alumni relations - to get alums to show up for the tailgate, and then hopefully the game.

The tents are all clearly marked

Alumni get together and sponsor "Dallas Rebels" tents, etc., w/ banners so that everyone who is from Dallas stops by, etc...the same idea could work at the Boulevard. "Fort Worth Mustangs" or "HP Ponies" - whatever,...same idea.

Stickers! I know its cheesy, but its hard to find someone not wearing a sticker of some kind for the game - "DG loves our Ponies" "Go Stangs" etc. - just a little something to help spirit

SMU could do a much better job of marketing "The Boulevard" - there is an entire line of products with a logo of a huge tree and "The Grove" at Ole Miss that sell like hotcakes. The school should really market the pre-game collegiate atmosphere on the Boulevard to alumni.

Just a few thoughts...

[EastStang]

Someone needs to first figure out why Dallas area SMU alums don't come to games with any regularity. What do the polls show? Has one been done? There are 50,000 DFW alums, and they should be the easiest group to sell about coming to games. Second, now that we're in CUSA the Mustang Club, and the Alumni Association should work together to see what can be done to improve road game attendence. We have chapters up and down the east coast. What is being done to plan an event at ECU which caters to Atlanta and DC area alums. We ought to be able to get at least 200-300 alums to the ECU game. Once they know the date of the game, send out postcards to DC and Atlanta alums saying, "mark this weekend on your calenders for a fun weekend".

[mrydel]

I could be wrong since I have not yet been wrong this year, but I think the 50,000 count for DFW alumni is very high. That would probably be true counting the graveyards.

[tmustangp]

Wow.. stallion those are some great ideas... Here are some ways to get them put into process.. Cherri Shaw works in the marketing department and she is charge of SMAC (student fan club committee) (actual acronym ?)... When i was in SMAC 2 years ago we talked a lot about the boulevard and these were ideas that we never thought of..
When Rogers, Guy and I do our first show, we will definately talk about these..
Also present this to Shawn (assc. ad ticket sales) b/c he would be able to set up the seating and sell the tickets that way..

[SMUstang]

I could be wrong since I have not yet been wrong this year, but I think the 50,000 count for DFW alumni is very high. That would probably be true counting the graveyards.

Just in case the 50,000 number is high. What about getting some of the football fans in Dallas who are not alumni of SMU to adopt SMU as their home team? I outlined on another thread how TCU, who came from a deeper ditch than we are in, got their attendance numbers up by enlisting Fort Worth residents. In a few short years they have ascended to heights we only dream of at SMU. Be honest now. Unfortunately we cannot get there by throwing money at the problem. It will take work, ie: people actually doing something.

[ALEX LIFESON]

Stallion did have some good ideas. I too would love to see Stallion get involved with the Athletic dept. He obviously spends massive amounts of time and energy on collecting SMU sports information. If he put some of those ideas and energy into solving some of the problems, instead of wasting all of his talents on Ponyfans, he could make a positive difference.