SMU Needs To Develop Dallas Hispanic Community

[SMUer]

DFW already has several professional soccer teams (Vaqueros, Dallas City FC to name two) with official club tie-ins with Mexican and Central American clubs. The best players from our Hispanic communities get signed on these teams. We'd need a lot more, deeper DFW recruiting for SMU soccer to be more appealing.

[Rebel10]

What was the soccer teams record last year?

[smupony94]

Soccer needs to be replaced with lacrosse

[RGV Pony]

... When we join the ACC

[Digetydog]

DFW already has several professional soccer teams (Vaqueros, Dallas City FC to name two) with official club tie-ins with Mexican and Central American clubs. The best players from our Hispanic communities get signed on these teams. We'd need a lot more, deeper DFW recruiting for SMU soccer to be more appealing.

While I agree with your desire to improve SMU's reputation in the Hispanic community, "recruiting for soccer" is more difficult than you might think.

Generally, most "elite" soccer players in Texas join a club program that includes games all over the state. Because of costs and other social factors, club soccer is largely made up of players from middle/upper class families. In contrast, the majority of lower income Hispanic players participate in local leagues that (a) don't travel for better competition, (b) don't have the coaching/facilities that "clubs" have and (3) don't have the level of competition that the "elite" club leagues provide. Although players like Omar Gonzalez (being 6'5" tall got everyone's attention) make it into the Elite club program from time to time, they are the exception.

I would bet 95-100% of our US born soccer recruits come out of the club system.

[RGV Pony]

Those players like you describe above are now probably going to wind up playing for the newest men's d1 team in Texas, UTRGV. They'll be able to get for instance the best players from the state champions and what not from Brownsville. I'd asked the previous staff (McClements) about a specific player or two from Hannah and they just couldn't get into SMU.

[SMU21TCU10]

The majority of the Latinos I met at SMU were really wealthy Mexicans and South Americans who have no interest in football

[RGV Pony]

I would submit that at times, that statement would apply to pretty much any ethnic group especially Caucasian that attends smu

[SMUer]

This is exactly my point...there aren't going to be a ton of DFW Hispanic kids to recruit on premier/academy national-level club teams because a majority have a difficult time paying for them, even with scholarships. If we are going to try to capture the Hispanic community using soccer, you're going to have to find good kids on non-Texans/Solar/Andromeda/FC Dallas club teams, who also happen to be D1 qualifiers (slim-to-none). I don't think the effort is worth it attendance/revenue-wise, nor would it make our team better...we should be, but we really have never really been a top program in soccer and we aren't really competitive for top national pool kids who are likely to see USMNT caps...attendance sucks...I say switch to baseball.

[Digetydog]

I would submit that at times, that statement would apply to pretty much any ethnic group especially Caucasian that attends smu

^^^*^^^^

[SMU89]

there are a lot of SMU graduates who are leaders of the Hispanic community

Adelpha Callejo
Rene Martinez
Rafael Anchia
Tony Garza

Daniel Hernández too.

And Chavo Williams.

Ricardo Noggin

[BigT3x]

SMU needs to court the entire DALLAS area, not just a slice of it. That will take change. Someone posted SMU's crowd numbers when we were one of the best teams in college football. It was about 30,000. I remember those days both at the Cotton Bowl and at Texas Stadium...lots of empty seats. To be a worthy school for a big conference 30,000 is not a good number. This bothers me much more than the coaching staff. (Keeping the coaching staff with a 30,000 limit might become a problem). I've made several suggestions to develop fans that didn't go over very well on this board. HOWEVER, I predict numbers at football games will be Hart's biggest challenge in the coming future.

They're going to have a real hard time doing that if you think they shouldn't target certain groups that happen to be a great opportunity for growth.

[whitwiki]

I think we need to develop the rich white community

[jpe747]

SMU needs to court the entire DALLAS area, not just a slice of it. That will take change. Someone posted SMU's crowd numbers when we were one of the best teams in college football. It was about 30,000. I remember those days both at the Cotton Bowl and at Texas Stadium...lots of empty seats. To be a worthy school for a big conference 30,000 is not a good number. This bothers me much more than the coaching staff. (Keeping the coaching staff with a 30,000 limit might become a problem). I've made several suggestions to develop fans that didn't go over very well on this board. HOWEVER, I predict numbers at football games will be Hart's biggest challenge in the coming future.

They're going to have a real hard time doing that if you think they shouldn't target certain groups that happen to be a great opportunity for growth.

Either you just want to argue or you missed read what I wrote. I did not argue against targeting Hispanics. In fact, I thought there were some great comments along those lines. But, I you are saying don’t target all of the major groups in Dallas (which was the gist of my comment) then you will fail. There is not a football team in the United States that goes after one ethnic group and neglects everyone else. That would be ridiculous. I’ll say it again; court the entire DALLAS area.

[East Coast Mustang]

I couldn't care less about soccer. It's a waste of space and a sport in the NCAA- we should have baseball or lacrosse; either one has a much larger national following than NCAA soccer. Not trying to knock anyone who's played soccer at SMU, just pointing out that other sports would be a better way for SMU to gain national exposure.

Honest and potentially ignorant question- how interested is the casual Latino sports fan in college football? I know the Cowboys have a huge Latino following, but how does that translate to college football? Does USC have a major Latino following, having a history of success in an area with a major Latino population?