Is SMU Going To Fundamentally Change College Football As We

[1983 Cotton Bowl]

UT has a beautiful set up. They get to play almost all their games in Texas or an immediately contiguous state, they have multiple natural rivals within easy driving distance of Austin, they have a huge fan/alumni base throughout Texas and Oklahoma, and they annually fill their ranks with 4 and 5 star recruits almost exclusively from the state of Texas. I really don't see a scenario where the give all that up to go play in a conference with a bunch of non-rival schools halfway across the country from states where UT draws absolutely no recuits and has a very limited fan base. I was raised in PAC-10 country and I can't remember ever meeting a single UT graduate while I lived there. It seems to me that it would require a massive blowup of the Big-12 for UT to ever consider changing conferences. Even then, the SEC would seem like a better fit for Texas than the PAC-10.

[couch 'em]

Agreed - zero reason for UT to go to PAC-10.

[Oliver]

This was interesting, I know its a lot of speculation at this point really, but I desperately hope we aren't left out of any major conference realignments, stuck twiddling our thumbs with rice and north texas and bunch of other bottom feeders.

[BoazHoes]

Keep dreaming stangs! We'll never be in BCS conference consideration until we bring baseball back. At least we have a nice women's crew team!

[Peruna_Ate_My_Rolex]

Keep dreaming stangs! We'll never be in BCS conference consideration until we bring baseball back. At least we have a nice women's crew team!

[Stallion]

I hear the Equestrian Team got two new recruits this fall

[PoconoPony]

A big consideration for any athletic department is the travel and costs of their entire athletic program. Hence, any conference alignment must necessarily give high consideration to all sports and not just football or basketball. No matter how profitable the big football and basketball programs might be most all university programs are very close to the break even point for revenues generated vs. costs or losing money. In fact, I read something recently that indicated that very few programs are actually generating more revenues than they are spending. Penn State for example has a highly regarded football program and an upcoming basketball program; however, they are still struggling. This past year, season's football tickets required a membership in the booster's club plus a $600 per year donation per EVERY season ticket held to maintain season tickets between the goal lines. Failure to maintain the $600 per ticket donation results in your season's ticket seats being relocated to the end zone. This is in a stadium that holds just short of 100,000. Penn State is thereby reliant on the booster's revenues to support their over all program. Bottom line is that schools must retain some regional continuity in their conference affiliations or the costs become too prohibitive as football and basketball cannot always generate the revenues to support all sports programs. As a result, booster's club funds have become a significant factor in sustaining programs. Hence, basing conferences and alignments only on football or basketball is not realistic unless a new trend is started where a conference is joined/formed for only one sport which leaves the rest of the athletic program/teams struggling for affiliations and conferences ( I guess this is already happening in swimming, soccer, wrestling, crew, skiing, rodeo, ....etc).



On another level, I recall reading that the biggest factor in supporting Penn State's decision to join the Big 10 was from the academic side of the house. As I recall, as a research university, Penn State was bolstered to the tune of over $110,000,000 per year into the research side of the university based on established Big 10 links to industry and grants that would flow to Penn State. I cannot recall the details of such links; however, recall that the academic side of the university benefited far more than the athletic side and was the biggest impetus behind Penn State joining the Big 10. Maybe somebody out there can articulate this aspect in better detail.

[NavyCrimson]

You're more in the know than me but yes, I remember reading that at that time, as well.

[Mrpimp]

EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM IS DREAMING. No conferance wants or will want SMU for the following simple reasons regardless of our improvment (in short we bring nothing to the table):

1. Zero fan base. (even undefeated we can't sell out Ford without a hard marketing push + giving away tickets to charity. Other than some people who went to SMU in Dallas, no one in Dallas cares about SMU. It hurts me to say it but it's true.

2. The reason we left the WAC for C-USA was not due to strength of conferance, but rather because of traveling costs and the close proximity to Rice, Houston, Tulane, Southern Miss, Utep, Tulsa.

I think the only way to save college football is for some of weaker rag doll teams in the bigger conferances, step up, make a principled move and align themselves with other similar institutions (academics/size/region) and form their own conferance. (and I know they wont because of $$$$$$$)...........For example imagine this Conferance:

West:
1. SMU
2. TCU
3. Baylor
4. Rice
5. Army *

East:
1.Tulane
2. Vanderbilt
3. Duke
4. Wake Forest
5. Navy *

* Maybe teams, but 8 teams would work

[gostangs]

Why would a research grantor give two hoots about the sports conference affiliation of a school - that sounds like a made up crock.

[Oliver]

EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM IS DREAMING. No conferance wants or will want SMU for the following simple reasons regardless of our improvment (in short we bring nothing to the table):

1. Zero fan base. (even undefeated we can't sell out Ford without a hard marketing push + giving away tickets to charity. Other than some people who went to SMU in Dallas, no one in Dallas cares about SMU. It hurts me to say it but it's true.

Give it time, any fan base that goes through 25 years of futility is going to lose its patience, and more noticeably its bandwagon jumpers and fair weather fans. And this goes for any team, even those so called the most loyal in sports, for instance I saw a highlight of Nomar hitting a homerun his rookie season into a nearly empty outfield at Fenway. Now they've sold over 500 consecutive games..

I think with consistent success, we'll see Ford starting rocking again, and we'll actually give our boys a real home field advantage. On another note, I've heard if we sell out Ford a couple times in the same year, they'll start adding more seating by either completing the bowl, or adding higher seating, that would be pretty neat.

[NavyCrimson]

As long as we win & win consistently, people will come.

I'm 53 & don't admit it but I've been following SMOOOO since the 60's as well as other big city teams & it's just the nature of the beast.

We just have to win but we MUST market ourselves. Frankly, we've done this so poorly in the past -even when winning. The last time we really made an effort in marketing our teams, all teams, was during the Pott's era in the 70's. That was magical! You had to be there to believe it.

Remember?

Mustang Mania!!

[Oliver]

Remember? Mustang Mania??!!

being 21, sadly I dont, but I'm all for Dallas being swept with Mustang Mania again!

[leopold]

think the only way to save college football is for some of weaker rag doll teams in the bigger conferances, step up, make a principled move and align themselves with other similar institutions (academics/size/region) and form their own conferance.

NEWSFLASH: Duke and Wake Forest play in a conference that has excellent schools as conference mates - UNC, Virginia, BC, Miami, Maryland and others are outstanding academically. So there's no need to join with us on the terms you've laid out. They're out.
Army and Navy have played collegiate athletics on their own terms since day one, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. But they don't need to worry about this junk, because they have other priorities, so they are out.
Vandy is very happy in the SEC. They are top 25 in almost all sports outside of football, can say they compete verses Harvard Monday through Friday and Alabama on Saturday, and have a historical precedent in Tulane to show them the errors of leaving the SEC, a conference they helped to found. In fact, go ask a Tulane alumn if they think, after nearly 50 years of reflection, if leaving the SEC was a good thing. Even many academics at Vandy will call your "principles" what they are: Bull$hit. Get on a Vandy board and ask 'em! So they are out.
Baylor: See Vandy.
What you are left with are a couple of schools who are having to learn the hard way after years of negligence, holier-than-thou attitudes, or in our case, outright cheating.
PEOPLE NEED TO STOP BRINGING UP THE "MAGNOLIA" LEAGUE, IN ANY FORM, IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, AND AS SUCH WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

Why would a research grantor give two hoots about the sports conference affiliation of a school - that sounds like a made up crock.

Because the academics have gotten smart and realized that Conferences don't have to end with sports. The Big Ten and Pac-10 absolutely network along academic and research lines now. It IS a big deal. There is a rumor that the teachers at Notre Dame are all for a Big Ten affiliation.
It used to be that the Ivy League was nothing more than a sports conference. I read in a book called "The Game of Life" written by a Harvard Professor in the late 1990's that (at that time) the the schools in Ivy League existed as a sports affiliation only. Those same schools did not appear either complete and exclusively in any other capacity. It's ironic: The Ivy League has an academic reputation built on sports affiliation. But they now use it to help network on any manner of fields. As a result, it does matter academically who you compete against athletically.

[NavyCrimson]

In other words -

We better figure this bcs-BS crap out & join in -

We better lead a charge & destroy the bcs-BS or -

We better raise about $5B-plus in the next 60 days for our endowment & create a whole new university that's 2nd to none - literally -