Ford Attendance Record

[smumustang1980]

The 1982 game was packed with 65,101. SMU was No. 2 and Arkansas was No. 6 or so. I said 1984 when SMU played for a share of SWC Championship with Houston

What should we be doing differently?

[Stallion]

see my prior 26,862 posts

We've got the Academic Model straighten out-need to continue to improve facilities, play teams our fans care about and more fully fund marketing department. The biggest problem right now is that we need a Coach who will emphasize recruiting with a young, aggressive staff-exactly like Larry Brown is doing. Note SMU BB bigwigs correctly made a decision to increase funding for coaching to retain top young recruiting staff. His program is the Model. In Football we poured our money into Head Coach salary

[smumustang1980]

see my prior 26,862 posts

We've got the Academic Model straighten out-need to continue to improve facilities, play teams our fans care about and more fully fund marketing department. The biggest problem right now is that we need a Coach who will emphasize recruiting with a young, aggressive staff-exactly like Larry Brown is doing. Note SMU BB bigwigs correctly made a decision to increase funding for coaching to retain top young recruiting staff. His program in the Model. In Football we poured our money into Head Coach salary

LOL! Re the posts... I'm watching the Fresno Rutgers game, writing a brief for court and amusing myself with Ponyfans... Yes, I agree. Slowly we make some progress.

[tristatecoog]

FWIW, the UH media guide indicates an average of 30,123 for games at SMU (Dallas) for 1976, 80, 82 and 84. I didn't include what seems to be a real outlier of 64,871 in 1978. Does anyone know why it would be double the other figures? Doak Walker bobblehead giveaway?

UH averaged 37,025 against the Ponies in Houston over three games in 1977, 79 and 81, which was Houston's heyday.

UH and SMU also ended the 1983 season with the Mirage Bowl with an attendance figure of 70,000. Did anyone here attend that game? It was a 34-23 SMU victory which pushed the Coogs to 3-5 record in conference (7th place).

By the way, how about some perspective? During those same years, TCU averaged 18,333 at home vs. UH and all were Horned Frog losses. They had a low of 13,257 in 1981 and a high of 25,412 in 1979. All figures were below SMU's for that period.

Go Ponies! I'll be wearing white tomorrow night.

[Stallion]

Ha! The Mirage Bowl was in Japan-didn't make that one

the 64,000 for 1978 was a big Mustang Mania promotion. But UH was a national contender several years in late 1970s so a good matchup against our young ballyhooed Pony Express recruiting Class. UH went to Cotton Bowl and let victory over Notre Dame and Joe Montana slip away after beating the crap out of them all day

[smumustang1980]

FWIW, the UH media guide indicates an average of 30,123 for games at SMU (Dallas) for 1976, 80, 82 and 84. I didn't include what seems to be a real outlier of 64,871 in 1978. Does anyone know why it would be double the other figures? Doak Walker bobblehead giveaway?

UH averaged 37,025 against the Ponies in Houston over three games in 1977, 79 and 81, which was Houston's heyday.

UH and SMU also ended the 1983 season with the Mirage Bowl with an attendance figure of 70,000. Did anyone here attend that game? It was a 34-23 SMU victory which pushed the Coogs to 3-5 record in conference (7th place).

By the way, how about some perspective? During those same years, TCU averaged 18,333 at home vs. UH and all were Horned Frog losses. They had a low of 13,257 in 1981 and a high of 25,412 in 1979. All figures were below SMU's for that period.

Go Ponies! I'll be wearing white tomorrow night.

Mirage Bowl was in Tokyo.

[The Falcon]

Tri-state Coog. The 1983 Houston/SMU game was played in the Mirage Bowl in Tokyo Japan
and SMU won the game 34-12. Only a few SMU people were at that game - mostly Japanese
fans.

[Mexmustang]

I actually made it to two Mirage Bowls--the first between Miami and ND and then the SMU-Houston game. The crowd was all Japanese. Those on the left got red and blue pompoms, those on the right, red and white. They didn't have a clue who to root for. Cold fish, grilled squid and noodles instead of hot dogs and beer. Almost all those in attendance were employees of the automobile company that sponsored the game--but it was a sell out in the old Olympic Stadium.

[smumustang1980]

Mex, do you remember the weird fish stands outside the stadium?

[PlanoStang]

Well, let's focus on the future. Leave me with my memories... Enough said about this.

What do you think SMU should be doing differently today given your experience with Mustang Mania?

They shouldn't try to charge Aggies $95 per ticket to sit in the end-zone, and NOT closing
the ticket office on game day after selling 35000 tickets when the stadium capacity is at least
37000 as seen from the AFBowl

Maybe that's 2 strikes against Hart in his quest to become Copeland the SECOND, but I'm not sure
the $95 / ticket was his idea. If Jerry Jones was SMU President, Hart would already be gone.

[leopold]

And in 1927 SMU averaged 800,000 fans when we played Notre Dame and the Seattle Seahawks every week!! Marty Bell told me himself while we were drinking 'shine and playing Tour of Duty.

Sorry, I'm at an airport bar drinking but WHO CARES?!




We can routinely sell out a 40000 - MAYBE 500000 - seat stadium, given a better team and stronger, more regional opponents.

There. Discussion back on track towards relevancy.

[Charleston Pony]

Stallion, Mrydel and Rayburn are right...except for home games when our visitors brought half the crowd or we gave away huge numbers of tickets, SMU in the "modern era" has shown we don't need any more than 32,000 seats. Even in the Pone Express days, we were hard pressed to generate anywhere near 30,000 fans of our own. Go look it up and see what kid of crowds we had against the private schools and even against the larger public schools when they were having "down" years and their fans didn't show up in huge numbers

let's be happy with Ford and hope we can someday generate a real home field advantage (when the visitors colors appear in only the end zone corners on the east side)