Serious Question about Students

[NewAgeMustange]

I know a lot of people complain about the lack of student support for the program as it is now.

But forgetting the current season, historically how intense has the student support been?

My years at SMU it was get there late, stay for 2nd quarter leave if we are losing really bad. Stay if its a big game/TCU. But really there might have been a quarter of the people that showed up at the beginning still there at the end. The only game I remember being full till the end was against TCU. If anything the last couple years have actually seemed like there was more students staying longer.

Then again how is this affected by mid-afternoon games vs night games vs. morning. Are students more likely to stay if they don't have a fiery sun god blasting down on them for 3 hours while they are drunk?

[smusic 00]

Compared to the cotton bowl in the late 90s student support is a thousand times better.

[Bergermeister]

Compared to the cotton bowl in the late 90s student support is a thousand times better.

Agree. We don't have a whole lot of students in the first place. Like all other schools, some aren't going to go to any sporting event... ever.

[PK]

In the mid 60s when we played at the cotton bowl, I don't remember ever leaving early from a game nor do I remember others doing so. Oh by the way, fraternity members wore coats and ties to the game in those days.

[78pony]

Our folks don't do sun well. For that matter, neither do I.

Always heard that if we played Friday night games we would have the best support.

[MustangStealth]

Then again how is this affected by mid-afternoon games vs night games vs. morning. Are students more likely to stay if they don't have a fiery sun god blasting down on them for 3 hours while they are drunk?

The time is irrelevant.

Early kick off? 1st quarter is too early to get up. 4th quarter is too hot.

2 PM kick off? 1st quarter is too hot. 4th quarter interferes with party prep time.

Late kick off? Whole game interferes with parties.


The students show up late and leave early regardless of the time of day, and then they'll make excuses. The simple fact is that they aren't interested.

[Chnash318]

There are more students at games this year than there were my freshman year (Junes' first year) that is for sure

[SMUer]

We don't attract or recruit a lot of football-interested students because of our 25 years of consistent suckage. Students simply don't pick SMU with football in mind. So we can moan and grown about the students not supporting the players but even an enormous effort to capture more students is going to generate marginal gains from a tiny group anyway. It's Dallas folks. Dallas is our only hope. We should stop being myopic and self-flagellating and start figuring out how to appeal to our surrounding population.

[Big12Mustang]

We don't attract or recruit a lot of football-interested students because of our 25 years of consistent suckage. Students simply don't pick SMU with football in mind. So we can moan and grown about the students not supporting the players but even an enormous effort to capture more students is going to generate marginal gains from a tiny group anyway. It's Dallas folks. Dallas is our only hope. We should stop being myopic and self-flagellating and start figuring out how to appeal to our surrounding population.

6,500 undergrads vs. Market of 6.5 Million DFW residents and only need 30,000.
Completely agree with you.

[AusTxPony]

Aren't Michigan and Michigan State complaining about student attendance. I don't think we are the only ones having trouble. Maybe this realignment stuff ESPN has foisted on College Football is spawning some unintended consequences?

[smupony94]

When games used to take 2.5 hours and now take 4 hours because of tv timeouts is part of it.

[Fresno Mustang]

Aren't Michigan and Michigan State complaining about student attendance. I don't think we are the only ones having trouble. Maybe this realignment stuff ESPN has foisted on College Football is spawning some unintended consequences?

I personally believe one of the contributing factors for our poor attendance is SMU pulling kids from all over the nation, which is a blessing for the university but can be a curse for the football program. WHy would a kid from LA sit in the sun on the 5 yard line in the student section to watch a mediocre smu team play Memphis when he could watch USC on his flat screen tv? Same reasoning applies for smu kids from the south growing up on sec football. Combine that w/ us playing .500 football in the cusa / american against schools like usf and kids arent interested. I think SMU has taken measures to get to freshman early and turn them into fans (see mustang 11), but not being relevant and not having students w/ longstanding personal ties to the team kills student support.

[Grant Carter]

We don't attract or recruit a lot of football-interested students because of our 25 years of consistent suckage. Students simply don't pick SMU with football in mind. So we can moan and grown about the students not supporting the players but even an enormous effort to capture more students is going to generate marginal gains from a tiny group anyway. It's Dallas folks. Dallas is our only hope. We should stop being myopic and self-flagellating and start figuring out how to appeal to our surrounding population.

I understand what you mean, but we should work on both markets. There is no reason we cannot try to get more students in at the same time we try to get more alumni or other area residents to attend. Marketing to students is not something that should require a lot of money so it should not be cost prohibitive.

Part of a fun college atmosphere is a rowdy student section(see Moody) so getting more students there helps make it more likely that first time visitors turn into repeat customers. Also, students are future customers who will have spouses and families so we have to try to engage with them even if they are not the immediate answer to attendance issues.

[SMUer]

Maybe we should just embrace the exclusive attitude: knock out the visitor-side upper-tier and completely ring Ford with suites, make the end-zones party decks, food & beverage areas, comp celebrity tickets, post game concerts, etc. Make being at an SMU game an experience independent of how well we are doing on the field.

I agree that we've got to capture students, but we also need to accept that many kids go to SMU who will not and will never attend a football game because they aren't interested. We might be stuck with the students who already come...getting them to stay may be our best use of money/time. I just think there is a lot of hand-wringing about 1-2K when we are looking to fill something like 10-15K seats.

[covok48]

Went to school from 03-07. Student attendance was always its strongest for 3 type of games:

1) TCU

2) Big name schools.

3) Games we had a reasonable chance of winning


If #3 was part of the first 2, the student section was packed and they'd stay until the very end, as they did against the Frogs in 2005. If none of the above took place, I could pick my seat in the student section.

It's not much different from any other student section. It's just looks worse as our student numbers are already small.