PonyFans.com

Ricefootball.net is featuring a cartoon and program, this week, from the 1954 Rice-SMU game held in Rice Stadium. SMU won it, 20-6, in front of 60,000-plus. There's a graphic from the program that shows that Rice and SMU both were in the top 15, nationally, in attendance, the previous year.

How times have changed.....


http://www.ricefootball.net

Indeed -- let's all thank our friends who orchestrate that B(C)S .... among others.

for SMU and Rice, times changed LONG before the BCS was born. When did our attendance woes begin? Seriously, any historians out there? I know we drew some pretty pitiful crowds to the Cotton Bowl in my days at SMU (1970-1974). The decline, except for a few good runs, may date back to the Dallas Cowboys arriving in town

Charleston,

I think that high tide was in '49 or '50, the epic loss to ND and what I've

read was a great struggle with UT.

I began SMU in '55 and the decline had started before that.

In the mid 60's, we played at the Cotton Bowl and I remember that we had pretty good crowds...I know the student section was always full. I think you are right though, as the Cowboys became Dallas' team, our attendance dropped off. Prior to that, I think SMU was Dallas' team much as UT is Austin's team today.