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There are many reasons for the low attendance at SMU basketball games. One has to be the lack of SMU generated publicity. In todays DMNS there is no mention of the Baylor game except for a small listing of all games in the southwest today. The News has a large headlined article on the Tech-Ohio State game but nothing at all about SMU-Baylor. I am curious why SMU itself does not publicise games. If I did not have season tickets I would not even know the game was scheduled. I believe we are probably missing out on a larger attendance by the lack of publicity.

They send out emails thinking everyone in Dallas in on the list

SMU's marketing falls short most of the time.

Tech alone has 40,000 alums living in DFW per the DMN (Don't know about OSU, but I bet it's significant). I'll bet that the total number of living SMU alums everywhere in the world is not much more than 60,000 total.

(that's just a guess based on approx 1000 +/- grads a year and being generous with a life expectancy of 80 years - not really my point here, so don't make me waste time looking the number up)

based on that alone, there is a much higher demand for news about Tech than SMU. Not to mention that those are both big time programs and the alure of Bob Knight also is newsworthy in and of itself.

The game last year that they played at AAC sold over 15,000 tickets. If SMU could draw like that, we'd get a nice article about us too. Our lack of fans is not attributed to the Morning News not publishing articles on us. Their job is to report what people care about (bottom line $ is what drives the paper - don't kid yourself otherwise) and what will get readers.

true, but why didn't SMU at least take an ad out in the sports section, or run a promotion about two old SWC rivals meeting onthe court tonight? That is something that the marketing department can control, and didn't do anything about at least not that I saw in the paper this morning.

The SMU Athletic Department knows marketing (they just don't get to put their knowledge to work). Even if they didn't, all they gotta do is retrieve an old ledger book from Excitement '68, Mustang Mania, "Run, Sonny, Run", and other successful campaigns that sold a lot of tickets and created interest. The only thing I can figure is that the marketing bank account is overdrawn. Somebody please make a deposit. We're dyin' on the vine.

cost v. potential return

My guess is that the only people that you would get to go to the game that weren't already going would be a handful of alums for both schools that probably knew about the game at some point, but it had slipped their memory of late.

anyone who is going to go out and watch a college basketball game tonight that has no affiliation with either school is going to go to AAC to watch the Tech v. OSU game. We just couldn't compete with that.

I'm not arguing the fact that I wish there was better publicity about SMU as well, but you've got to consider all these angles.

Also, when the SMU v. Baylor game was scheduled, we couldn't have known about the competition. Tech had originally scheduled the game to be played in Lubbock and then moved it just a few weeks ago i believe.

Oh well, I guess we be surrounded by Baptists.

Bergermeister wrote:The SMU Athletic Department knows marketing (they just don't get to put their knowledge to work). Even if they didn't, all they gotta do is retrieve an old ledger book from Excitement '68, Mustang Mania, "Run, Sonny, Run", and other successful campaigns that sold a lot of tickets and created interest. The only thing I can figure is that the marketing bank account is overdrawn. Somebody please make a deposit. We're dyin' on the vine.

Yeah, I remember all of the above with "Run, Sonny Run" my senior year.
I couldn't believe the DMN didn't have at least a small article on the game
between old SWC rivals. Copeland should've at least put a small ad in the
sports section. The crowd though was about what I expected. I'd say 3
to 4k with a fair Baylor showing on the southeast side. Might've drawn in
a few more Dallas Baptists with an ad.

The next marketing campaign should be RUN Copeland RUN!!

You should have looked in the Monday Sports Day in the DMN. There was a 1/4 page ad supporting SMU basketball - both men's and women's. It was either on page 3 or 5. If need be, I'll go dig it out of the recycling bag and document it.

Our marketing people work their [deleted] off and all you people do here is b#$ch and moan about everything that's wrong. Sometimes, I wonder why I still read this board.

Yeah, gettin' that billboard up in South Dallas is a real struggle and driving to Kinko's to get the classy basketball game program printed will really wear your [deleted] out. Get a clue.

Does anybody really believe it would have been possible to HYPE this game? Lets get real, were talking about a game that NOBODY would watch or care about unless they were alums, school employes or relatives of players. Baylor vs SMU might be nostolgic, but this current version is just bad.