Cincinnati - Miami Attendance

[footballdad]

Good grief. College football is about 1000000x more visible and popular now than it was in the Pony Express days. We aren't trying to sell out Texas Stadium. Nice try though helicopter.

Good grief, always the next excuse, nice try yourself.

Good retort helicopter. Quality stuff.

Read the Stallion post above genius, and then put it to rest.

[Big12Mustang]

Food for Thought: Mustang Mania filled the house BEFORE Ron Meyer ever had a winning record. In fact, SMU has never built a strong program in the modern era by recruiting and hoping to fill the stadium after a decade of 10 win seasons. The reason is because when only 10,000 show up at your games no decent recruit wants to play at your school. Despite the stupidity of Big 12 [deleted] TCU and Baylor never had the ghost crowds SMU routinely has-and I was at both schools every other year for decades

Well why are you an SMU fan? If we will never pack the house, be in the Big 12, why still be a fan of a div 2 program?

[PonyKris89]

I love how we talk about attendance like its an apples to apples comparison. There are so many variables that go into it that make it an asinine argument.

TCU has been winning at a consistent level now for more than a decade. They have multiple wins against Top 25 competition, bowl wins, Heisman candidates, BCS bowl appearances, etc. Oh yeah. And there are about 50,000,000 less things to do on a random Saturday in FW than in Dallas.

How many wins against Top 25 competition have we seen at Ford over the last 15 years? How many signature wins? How many games where we played an exciting, engaging brand of football that when you left the stadium you thought "Man that was exciting! I can't wait for the next one!" How many opportunities to beat a former SWC opponent and engage our fans early in the season were squandered with outright blowouts and embarrassments?

I'm not saying that we are a great fan base. I don't even know if we are good. What I will say is that comparing SMU and TCU attendance is STUPID. The only comparison we have to them is that we are 40 miles apart from each other. They've had continuity in the coaching staff, style of play, high profile wins, high profile players, major bowl victories, and now they're in the Big 12. They are embedded in the fabric of Fort Worth in a way that we probably will never be here at SMU with Dallas. Comparing our attendance to TCU when they have a full decade head start on a nationally competitive program (something we still do not have) is stupid.

There is only one way to fix the attendance conundrum. WIN GAMES THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT. Show the SMU fans and the casual football fans that an afternoon at Ford is three and a half hours wasted watching borderline D1AA football. We have home games coming up against Baylor and TCU in coming years. You want fans to come back to SMU and watch us in conference? Win those games. Be competitive. Be relevant. We were none of these under June Jones.

Only problem with that argument, posted here many times by old time SMU fans who were around during the good ole' days, the attendance was still poor when we did WIN GAMES THAT PEOPLE CARED ABOUT. Hmmmmm

Well, I beg to differ but SMU drew well from Mustang Mania through Pony Express days. I know it was first ticket give aways and exciting brand of football with Mike Ford to E. Tolbert and then it was actually winning vs big time competition during
the Pony Express. Problem is, we derailed our own program.

Did we sellout Texas Stadium on our own? No, but we put half the butts in those seats. Hell, I even remember SMU vs Baylor sellout at Texas Stadium and that was a true sellout. I believe it even beat Cowboy record crowd there. If we could have extended it for another 5 years, then I could have definitely seen us doing back then what TCU and Baylor are doing now. Yeah, I know, Woulda, coulda shoulda,.. but it is STILL possible.

But promotion probably not gonna work this time around like it did with Mustang Mania, it has to be done with sustained winning.

[Big12Mustang]

It's the product. Our alumni want a team they can be proud of...they want to proudly wave their SMU flags from their porch, they want to brag about the team and players like they now do with hoops. Football success will have 20x the benefits that basketball has/will give us.

[Digetydog]

I love how we talk about attendance like its an apples to apples comparison. There are so many variables that go into it that make it an asinine argument.

TCU has been winning at a consistent level now for more than a decade. They have multiple wins against Top 25 competition, bowl wins, Heisman candidates, BCS bowl appearances, etc. Oh yeah. And there are about 50,000,000 less things to do on a random Saturday in FW than in Dallas.

How many wins against Top 25 competition have we seen at Ford over the last 15 years? How many signature wins? How many games where we played an exciting, engaging brand of football that when you left the stadium you thought "Man that was exciting! I can't wait for the next one!" How many opportunities to beat a former SWC opponent and engage our fans early in the season were squandered with outright blowouts and embarrassments?

I'm not saying that we are a great fan base. I don't even know if we are good. What I will say is that comparing SMU and TCU attendance is STUPID. The only comparison we have to them is that we are 40 miles apart from each other. They've had continuity in the coaching staff, style of play, high profile wins, high profile players, major bowl victories, and now they're in the Big 12. They are embedded in the fabric of Fort Worth in a way that we probably will never be here at SMU with Dallas. Comparing our attendance to TCU when they have a full decade head start on a nationally competitive program (something we still do not have) is stupid.

There is only one way to fix the attendance conundrum. WIN GAMES THAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT. Show the SMU fans and the casual football fans that an afternoon at Ford is three and a half hours wasted watching borderline D1AA football. We have home games coming up against Baylor and TCU in coming years. You want fans to come back to SMU and watch us in conference? Win those games. Be competitive. Be relevant. We were none of these under June Jones.

Only problem with that argument, posted here many times by old time SMU fans who were around during the good ole' days, the attendance was still poor when we did WIN GAMES THAT PEOPLE CARED ABOUT. Hmmmmm

Well, I beg to differ but SMU drew well from Mustang Mania through Pony Express days. I know it was first ticket give aways and exciting brand of football with Mike Ford to E. Tolbert and then it was actually winning vs big time competition during
the Pony Express. Problem is, we derailed our own program.

Did we sellout Texas Stadium on our own? No, but we put half the butts in those seats. Hell, I even remember SMU vs Baylor sellout at Texas Stadium and that was a true sellout. I believe it even beat Cowboy record crowd there. If we could have extended it for another 5 years, then I could have definitely seen us doing back then what TCU and Baylor are doing now. Yeah, I know, Woulda, coulda shoulda,.. but it is STILL possible.

But promotion probably not gonna work this time around like it did with Mustang Mania, it has to be done with sustained winning.

If we had built Ford (with 40-45K seats + 5-10K overflow) back then, we would have had crowds that "looked" big.