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Can someone shed light on exactly what "Mustang Mania" entailed? Just a well executed marketing blitz? Everyone talks about how it seemed to really boost SMU's profile. It was before my time and just wanted to get some first hand perspective.

SMU2007 wrote:Can someone shed light on exactly what "Mustang Mania" entailed? Just a well executed marketing blitz? Everyone talks about how it seemed to really boost SMU's profile. It was before my time and just wanted to get some first hand perspective.

Stallion offered this about Mustang Mainia in a thread on a "A ten-year plan for SMU Football competitiveness".

Stallion wrote:Here's DMagazine article talking about the sponsors and Russ Pott's plans for each game of the 1978 season. Note the advertisements, the bumper stickers and schedules had already caught Dallas' eyes. Sponsors-7/11,Dr. Pepper, Frito Lay, Jack-in-the Box and Ford

http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/1978/10/0 ... thers.aspx

This guy sounds like he was awesome. Wish hart had even a fraction of that gusto

Thanks PK. I had no idea

For those that don't want to read the whole thing-this excerpt was the gist of Mustang Mania-"also known as empty seats create no momentum and don't buy parking, hot dogs and cold drinks":

"My mission," says Russ Potts, for whom the word is appropriate, "is to make sure that the man on the street knows that SMU is playing football on Saturday." To that effect, he is spreading the good word. He speaks to any student group that will listen, collars alumni at every street corner, has mailed a Mania letter to every resident of the Park Cities, and has secured a delayed broadcast TV contract with Channel 5 (the first of its kind in the Southwest Conference). Every home game is a promotional event. The first, against TCU, became the Jerry Lew-is/7-Eleven Bowl - charity football for muscular dystrophy - bolstered by 12,000 tickets purchased by local business and industry and then distributed to youth groups. ("The kid sitting in the end zone today," says Potts, "buys a season ticket tomorrow.") The result: a crowd of 41,112, largest for an SMU-TCU game in 20 years. The second home game, against Houston on October 21, will be Kids Day, sponsored by Jack-In-The-Box: For every paid adult, five kids get in free. ("You may say that sounds preposterous," says Potts. "But we know that no single adult can handle five kids, so he brings another adult. That’s two seats sold at eight bucks each and that’s 16 new dollars for SMU football.") The November 4 Texas A&M game will be the "Hall of Fame" game with an "appropriate giveaway" from Dr Pepper and 8,000 SMU caps given away by Frito Lay. The November 25 Arkansas game will feature the giveaway of 10,000 SMU warm-up jackets.
Potts bases his promotional efforts on "corporate partnership," meaning simply that every promotional scheme is co-sponsored by at least one business entity so that the tab is picked up by somebody besides SMU. Thus, the athletic department’s promotional budget is held in check despite the all-out blitz.

That radio station must have printed up 2 million bumper stickers because you could pick them up at the info desk of the student center well into the mid 80's.

if our basketball team pans out, they should do a similar marketing strategy. gotta have a product to sell, which isn't going to be our football team anytime soon

How scary is it that in 35 years (2013 vs 1978) SMU has yet to make ground? My takeaways are 20 years of crummy football, hard to compete in large metroplex (which is also considered a crutch/excuse), pad the schedule with lousy beatable teams and win 7 game a year. Market, market, market and people show up.

I think it takes more than that in 2013 to get people's attention and keep them interested. Here are some excerpts from the article:


But can the campaign revive an athletic program that has wallowed in 20 years of lethargy?

SMU, like most metropolitan universities, fights a losing battle for the local entertainment dollar. Even a school like UCLA, rich in athletic prowess, is poor at the gate; last season UCLA football averaged only 40,000 fans a game (including a showing of 80,000 for the final game of the season against crosstown rival USC), this despite a stateful of alumni and the enormous LA audience. The reason, of course, is that there are plenty of other things to do in Los Angeles. As opposed to Norman, Oklahoma, where there is little to do but watch the Sooners.

All well and good. But Russ Potts is the first to admit that no promotion is worth a flip if the product isn’t salable. That means a winning football team, and for SMU that’s a monstrous "if." "Ultimately," says Potts, "you have to win. Losing has a pivotal effect. A program like this has to snowball, has to succeed on momentum. Steady progress is our goal."

Next year’s non-conference opponents are North Texas State, Tulane, and Wichita. That’s not an accident. When Potts arrived, the Mustangs were scheduled to play fearsome Alabama next year. Potts did some "rearranging," and now the Mustangs can look forward to beating up on Wichita instead (Wichita has also agreed to sub for SMU and go to Birmingham for the slaughter). Potts has padded future schedules with more North Texas State and UT/Arlington games, first for the purpose of establishing regional rivalries (a wise maneuver), but also for the purpose of beating them; North Texas State is no patsy these days, but it’s no Penn State, either. The bottom line is winning, and the bottom line, for Russ Potts, is also precise.

"The magic number is seven," he says. "Seven wins in a season. In these days of the 95-scholarship limit, seven wins will get you a bowl game. And a bowl game is what it’s all about. Even if it’s a secondary bowl. A bowl game is a rallying point. It creates an excitement and togetherness that no bumper sticker ever can. Seven wins is what we’re after." If it takes a diluted schedule to win seven, Potts will take it. "Hey, we don’t have to apologize for our schedule. We play in the best conference in the country."

It is often argued, for example,that the plight of SMU football is largelydue to its being situated in the shadow ofthe Dallas Cowboys: Dallas already has afootball team, the best; it doesn’t need theMustangs, or want them. "That’s ridiculous," says the indomitable Russ Potts."The Cowboys don’t bother me in theleast. Hey, they don’t have any emptyseats left. I’ve got plenty."

Sadly, many here would call Potts out for settling for mediocrity. I think he's right, crawl before you run. I hope we've learned a lesson and only schedule 2 OOC P5 games (if we win, would make a statement) and 2 winnable games. New coach would make us competitive in the P5 games, I hope.

And this quote says it all.

"Hey, we don’t have to apologize for our schedule. We play in the best conference in the country."

Can't really say that now...can we?

'Mania' was a mixture of pure genius & common sense - probably more c-sense than anything else.

But then again, common sense isn't so 'common' either.

I still have some of my Mustang Mania stuff. They even gave away thousands of little velcro mustangs that you could stick to things. I have one one an old shaving kit that I STILL cannot pull off!

MM sounds great in theory but the problem now isn't the price of admission. The problem is there is very little enthusiasm about our program outside of those of us who are really dedicated to SMU sports. The casual DFW sports fan would rather watch Texas or OU or the SEC game than to come to SMU and watch us play. If we gave away 10,000 tickets to the Temple game could we even find 10,000 people to come (for free?).

You couldn't sit at home or a bar (most bars didn't have a tv, and if they did it was one in a corner above the bar) and watch 20 games a day at that time.