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Announcer mentioned that the “spirit award” is a factor in selecting the organization’s homecoming queen/king. Shouldn’t spirit/attendance at games factor into this? Don’t just make it for homecoming either, have it start at the beginning of the season. The students clearly care about their organizations doing well for homecoming, every year the loudest they get is when their candidates are announced at halftime. Please SMU make going to games and getting crazy part of the spirit award.

PS As usual the floats were amazing, so cool how they are displayed at Doak Walker Plaza pregame. Now we just gotta find a way to bring that effort/spirit/creativity into the stadium!

Something has to be done to log in each person at each game and use that as maybe 50% of the point you earn. Voting and float still count 25% each but participation is the key to Spirit.

of the several students in front of me all were on the their phones constantly. a couple actually watched the smu game. one was glued to the ut game and showed no interest at all in the game right in front of him. all left early.

Nacho wrote:of the several students in front of me all were on the their phones constantly. a couple actually watched the smu game. one was glued to the ut game and showed no interest at all in the game right in front of him. all left early.

If you don't want to be there.......

The problem of being the fall back option for kids that can't go to their first choice.

So he didn't get into UT but got into SMU?

MV pony wrote:The problem of being the fall back option for kids that can't go to their first choice.

That's always been a cute little saying. But there are just as many for whom SMU was their dream choice.

Isn't there a rule that if you graduate at the top some% of your class you automatically get admitted to public university in TX?

malonish wrote:Isn't there a rule that if you graduate at the top some% of your class you automatically get admitted to public university in TX?

Yes, 10%...not sure if its automatic, but if you graduate in the top 10% of your class in Texas you can pretty much guarantee you'll get in to a Texas state college. There are many, many problems with our student body....too many out-of-staters, too many that are affluent enough to pretty much do whatever they feel like on weekends and thus don't need sports as entertainment, many with to little to no interest in sports because their generation is the softest and most coddled yet.....etc, etc.

You fix all of this by making attendance mandatory at 50% of home football and 30% of home basketball games or they get kicked out of school for failing "university participation". They have to scan their tickets on the way in and out of the game to see when they leave and if its before the end of the game it doesn't count.

I don't see being from out of state has anything to do with student attendance. certainly people outside Texas like football.

I was just making my case that if it's easier to get into state schools, maybe SMU wouldn't be the fall back option as often as the other way around.

JoeKidd wrote:

malonish wrote:Isn't there a rule that if you graduate at the top some% of your class you automatically get admitted to public university in TX?

Yes, 10%...not sure if its automatic, but if you graduate in the top 10% of your class in Texas you can pretty much guarantee you'll get in to a Texas state college.

UT Austin offers automatic admission to kids in the top 6% of their class, which fills 75% of the spots. If you are from OOS or go to a competitive HS, it is much, much harder to get into UT. As for which is the fallback, my daughter got into both

JoeKidd wrote:There are many, many problems with our student body....too many out-of-staters, too many that are affluent enough to pretty much do whatever they feel like on weekends and thus don't need sports as entertainment, many with to little to no interest in sports because their generation is the softest and most coddled yet.....etc, etc.

Hmm, let's see.......

a) Technology is bringing the world closer together, giving us more and more international students. This trend will only accelerate over time.
b) Schools are bloated, in debt, and charge excessive tuitions. Student college loan debt now surpasses credit card debt in America.
c) Some colleges and universities are projected to scale back or close altogether due to the above.
d) Many international students pay full fare, helping to partially offset these problems while giving schools a more diverse environment in a world that is rapidly becoming more diverse.

Yet your solution for an ACADEMIC school in one of the most important international commerce cities in America, is to actually enroll more in-state students to impact attendance at 6 home football games per year?

Are you serious????

Let me do the math here. SMU has about 12,000 students, of which maybe 6,000 are Texans. From what I gather, maybe 600 attend a typical home conference game. So by your logic, if we just made the student body 100% Texan, attendance would increase by 600 and THAT solves our problems?

Amazing the thought process of some on here.