The sheer excitement of a full house!

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

The potential attendance that compare today to the 80s are so pointless because college football is totally different now.

Win, and see what happens. Maybe we do have a 20k ceiling, but I would have said the same thing about TCU and now they can get 20k and another 15k in the concourse most weeks.

[mrydel]

Attendance is falling most everywhere now with all the TV games and top match ups. In my younger days there was about one good game a week on television. ESPN started up and they showed one game on Saturday and then replayed it several times the next week until the next one game they had the next Saturday.

[Pony Boss]

TCU can get to almost 40k in a similar city with a similar sized alumni base against a SFA or FCS type team. It took Big 12 of course. And Footballdad do not use "we" and "us", please do not troll this place anymore.

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

Attendance is falling most everywhere now with all the TV games and top match ups. In my younger days there was about one good game a week on television. ESPN started up and they showed one game on Saturday and then replayed it several times the next week until the next one game they had the next Saturday.

Very true. There used to only be 5-6 games on television a week and all on Saturday! Hard to believe these days...

[Pony Boss]

For a blueprint in building up your crowds/attendance, look at the 1998 TCU team in wikipedia and keep scrolling through the years until 2014 to see how attendance moves upwards. I read somewhere it took TCU getting into the Big 12 to get to 30k season tickets and this was the first year they sold out. I think a culture change can happen at SMU in this new era, you will need at minimum 5 years of success to get large parts of your student body to attend consistently...get the freshmen used to see you winning and when they are seniors they are still coming. Apathy is curable with CONSISTENCY, which is what TCU did 1998-2014 and only 2 seasons under .500

[footballdad]

We really can win the AAC. Stop using TCU and Baylor as a 'blueprint', that ship has sailed.

[Pony Boss]

We really can win the AAC. Stop using TCU and Baylor as a 'blueprint', that ship has sailed.

Why are you here clown? No one cares for the AAC which is why SMU is looking to upgrade. You have no clue.

[footballdad]

We really can win the AAC. Stop using TCU and Baylor as a 'blueprint', that ship has sailed.

Why are you here clown? No one cares for the AAC which is why SMU is looking to upgrade. You have no clue.

You really should care, and start to love and promote the AAC. If expansion EVER does happen, Houston, Cincy, UCF are definitely first in line, probably followed by USF & Memphis. There is a reason you never hear the SMU name even mentioned when expansion is discussed by the major media. It is what it is. No need to get angry. Think positive thoughts, or just refer to your faith.

This year WE will definitely show improvement. Morris and staff are good guys. Glad to have them.

[Rebel10]

For a blueprint in building up your crowds/attendance, look at the 1998 TCU team in wikipedia and keep scrolling through the years until 2014 to see how attendance moves upwards. I read somewhere it took TCU getting into the Big 12 to get to 30k season tickets and this was the first year they sold out. I think a culture change can happen at SMU in this new era, you will need at minimum 5 years of success to get large parts of your student body to attend consistently...get the freshmen used to see you winning and when they are seniors they are still coming. Apathy is curable with CONSISTENCY, which is what TCU did 1998-2014 and only 2 seasons under .500

I also think Coach Morris knows how to reach the entire Dallas area being because he is from here. I believe once he gets about 3 years into it things will get much better.

[Stallion]

...and if you go through that exercise by starting with the 1998 TCU Football Wikipedia page you will find that from the very start, in similar conferences and against similar opponents that TCU started out with a substantially larger fanbase than SMU even if you compare to SMU with June Jones' first bowl season in 2009.(In fact both TCU in 1997 and SMU 2008 were 1-11). Take out the big games against Big 12 schools and compare the conferences games and other games against teams with small local fanbases - focusing on games where TCU home base provides the attendance. Despite 4 bowl games since that point, SMU still has come nowhere close to where TCU was in 1998 in those significant games. So that puts us far behind where the TCU Franchione/Patterson program started in 1998 under similar circumstances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_TCU_ ... tball_team

[Pony Boss]

SMU is slightly smaller...it just means we have more work to do. What is the target? Is it 30k? 40k? I don't believe it to be impossible, it will take very careful planning and execution to get there, and it won't be easy, especially taking past results into consideration. Oh and TCU was not tainted with DP and an anti athletics environment in their university.

[03Mustang]

We'll be sure to note those excuses on the P5 conference application.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Charleston Pony]

our goal should be to fill Ford (by that I mean 25k no matter who we play and 30k plus for big games) and win AAC Championships and compete with Top 25 caliber teams. Do that consistently and SMU will be positioned to have a football future, whatever that might look like years from now.

[JasonB]

The potential attendance that compare today to the 80s are so pointless because college football is totally different now.

This. The sports landscape has completely changed since the 80s. We may have had a ceiling then, but because of the overall popularity of sporting events, those ceilings don't exist anymore when you are performing well.

The perception of the AAC is an important driver for the average attendance of league games. The league is more well respected than any league we have been in since the SWC, and has bigger names than when TCU was in the MWC. So I expect that as we improve and start to win a lot of games, our attendance will be just fine.

The key is a 10 win season. 10 win seasons make you relevant in the sports scene. 8 and 9 don't cut it.

[Pony Boss]

10 plus wins, JasonB