Renewed Proposal For Student Involvement

[Stallion]

I've made this proposal several times and I think it has some real potential. Since SMU is so handicapped in financing and personel in the athletic department, why not have each organization have a student representative to a Student Athletic Council. Each fraternity, sorority, school or organization would nominate a student representative to meet with athletic representatives each week preferrably on say Monday on football weekends. The Student representative could then report to the fraternity etc at their Chapter meetings often held on Monday Nite. The Student representative could keep each organizations apprised of games and coordinate marketing of special events, give-aways, road trips, posters, "Mustang Mania" stickers and game-day activities not to mention "encouragement" to members to attend. Inter-Organizational competition could be fostered so that the winning organization would receive certain benefits each week. There would always be some sports geek in every organization who would be willing to accept the position which would be seen as a leadership position within the organization and would look nice on his or her resume.

[Duke Blue Blood]

or.......We could win games....not a bad proposal, but there is a complete and total "lifestyle" where sports is not a major part of SMU student life.

DBB

[Pony_Fan]

I think it is very important to start students at the orientation level - ALL students - undergrad and grad....give them T-shirts to wear for games - free bumper stickers,etc...figure out how to make it "cool" to attend games...if you notice the boulevard is pretty crowded...but most duck out and go watch other games or continue drinking...

[couch 'em]

A simple solution is to make game attendance part of the homecoming organization competitions. Have signin before the game, and signout at the end of the game. It would be based on % of organization attending, and would include all football and bball games.

[abezontar]

serve alcohol in the stadium, require a certain percentage of of each organization to attend sporting events, and have your student leader be in charge of getting his groups people to the game, stop having freshman orientation off campus, and make sure the training for the orientation leaders is mostly SMU history and spirit related, choose your orientation leaders based mostly on their spirit.

[KnuckleStang]

Adopt the service academy model--mandatory attendance at sporting events!

[Charleston Pony]

I agree that somethng needs to be built into orientation and I like Stallion's idea as a follow up to keep 'em interested...make the students feel a part of our success. I'd like to hear our coaches thanking and praising our fans for turning out and making noise. I can't ever remember hearing that in any post game comments...of course, that may be because our fans haven't been that big a part of the "home court/home field: equation.

I like what the local minor league baseball team did here (under the ownership of Mike Veeck), i.e., they started a contest to "pack the park" and they got the local paper to report after every game where the total and average attendance figures were vs the previous season. It bcame a competition and they wound up setting attendance records 3 yrs running.

[BringBackThePonies03]

Getting the students more involved would result in more students and more people in attendance at all SMU sporting events.

[LawSchoolPony]

I think it is very important to start students at the orientation level - ALL students - undergrad and grad....

I couldn't agree more!!! A group of us at the law school suggested having the live Peruna (not the cheesy one in the costume) show up for law school orientation during the Hamburger Man's visit to the Quad when everyone is outside eating hamburgers...just to show students, "Hey, we have a mascot, and a team.." - but my understandin g from the student representative to the law school administration was that they shot this down...and shot down any other suggestions that were made about giving an entry-level intro to SMU. [/b]

[Pony_Fan]

This seems new to me - "SMU customer service" - I haven't seen it until recently....ideas should be sent here

http://smumustangs.collegesports.com/sc ... rvice.html

[EastStang]

Do freshmen football players still live in athletic dorms? When I was a freshman, the freshmen lived in regular dorms and got more assimilated into the student body, made friends in the dorms, got involved in intramurals (not touch football), played poker with the guys, and because they got to be friends with the regular students, I think more students came to games to see their friends. Bennett, the AD and Turner might think about it. Clue me in on today's SMU.

[MustangIcon]

Part of the problem is the administration does not take the typical SMU student into consideration when promoting SMU athletics. Market to who you are actually trying to sell to. My idea for increasing basketball game attendance which I think SMU would never go for because they are too thick headed (or maybe it is illegal for a university to do, if so please retract me thick headed comment) is:

Have an attendance contest per student organization for the entire home basketball season with the largest organization attendance winning AN SMU SPONSORED TAILGATE FOR THE FOLLOWING FOOTBALL SEASON! SMU would pay for the organizations tent fee, food, beverages (yes this would include beer), and the stupid bartenders required by SMU for student organizations.

I graduated in May of '05 and was in charge of tailgates for my fraternity my Jr. year. I would say our tailgate costs went something like this:
- Tent Fee for Season $700
- Avergae Beer per Game $400
- Average Food and Soda per Game $100
- Bartenders $ No idea. We did not have to have them when I did tailgates but SMU has a certain company they have chosen that you must use I believe.
- Note Family Weekend requires much larger food/beer purchase and would probably be about $800 for the game as opposed to $500.

Basically, this is a reward that would ACTUALLY MATTER to student organizations. Over 6 games (5 regular and 1 family weekend game) it would save the winning organization about $4,000 plus bartenders for the upcoming football season. This seems like it would be a drop in the bucket to SMU considering it would probably increase student attendace by 300 a game pretty easily (15 students from 20 organizations seems like a reasonable estimate).

The beauty of the reward is the reward then promotes SMU football for the following season. $4k is a lot of money for a fraternity. That would allow another party in the budget which is something that would really motivate students to show up. If the school is allowed to do this (the beer thing is what I am not so sure about) they need to swallow their pride, step up and do it. Just my 2 cents.

[SMUstang]

This would be a start. 300 more students at each game would help. I'm sure there are lots of other ideas out there that would also help.