Conditioned to losing at an early age

[SmooBoy]

While my 8 yr-old has been to a dozen or so games over his short lifetime, this was the first one he actually sat and watched start to finish. On the way into the stadium he innocently asked me "Does SMU have one of the best teams in America this year?" As I held back laughter, I could see that he has an incredible amount of unconditional optimism.

He cheered each 1st down, and jumped wildly at each TD. He was beside-himself nervous for overtime with chants of "please don't let us lose" and "are we going to win Daddy?" With the final UTEP run occuring just below us, we headed out of the UTEP fan throng and I could see the obvious disappointment in his eyes.

I was fortunate to attend my first games at age 8 just as Dickerson and James and Co. were arriving on the scene. He, unfortunately, gets to only know what losing is all about, week in, week out, and fight through what looks to be more questions than answers. Hopefully his son will get to attend games with him when it's once again fun to be on the Hilltop.

As for me, I will continue to attend in search of that unconditional optimism.

[RGV Pony]

Right there with ya. My four year old pounded his thunder sticks together and yelled "come on PONIES!" on every play. Pounded the seats in front of us on every third and long, right before the Miners converted it.

He was also sporting an SMU shirt after the Tech game, along with the rest of my family, when we walked into Champps for dinner. Nice touch when someone said to him "you need to get another team or change that shirt, little man!"

[Hoop Fan]

I feel your pain men. My son is 11 now and he is conditioned to the beatings, although he still had tears in his eyes as we walked out yesterday. He has continued to wear his SMU gear to school through it all, despite taking massive amounts of crap from other kids. He went to UP Elementary and there might not have been another kid in the whole school who rooted openly for smu. Sad as hell is what it is.

I don't feel entitled to a winning college football team, but the one thing that does make me mad about SMU's lack of committment, are the tears and little things it puts my son through with no payback on the horizon.

[mustangklick]

This post makes me sad to the point of tears, because I can see now that SMU is turning into a Cleveland team... and frankly I don't really want to live in Ohio.