Houston opens next year at OU?

[ojaipony]

I'm in the "just win" camp. Just this year, losing to James frickin' Madison absolutely KILLED any fan support momentum we had built up. Just win.

[whitwiki]

I'm sure better uniforms will help

[One Trick Pony]

I'm sure better uniforms will help

and ?

[Puckhead48E]

Comparing building a basketball program to football is one of the purest signs of stupid there is.

Number of games, number of programs, number of athletes, number of coaches, travel considerations, budgets, venue size...etc. I'm pretty certain Kansas and Duke, to name a few historic underachievers in football, aren't lead by epically stupid AD's. Success in football (both growing and maintaining it) is more difficult than basketball based on the math and finances.

I hope we maintain the current trajectory and consistently improve our win total and prove that it can be done...but it will be difficult because the ceiling on football is inclusion into a P5, vice the NCAA success scale that matters in basketball. I trust in what Chad et al are doing.

[Rebel10]

I'm sure better uniforms will help

When you don't have a stellar record to go on it helps to at the least get recruits attention which a helps in recruiting which helps in winning. And we need all the help we can get in recruiting.

[Rebel10]

Any truth we aren't doing the full 10 deal with UNT?

I hope it is true.

[CalallenStang]

Comparing building a basketball program to football is one of the purest signs of stupid there is.

Number of games, number of programs, number of athletes, number of coaches, travel considerations, budgets, venue size...etc. I'm pretty certain Kansas and Duke, to name a few historic underachievers in football, aren't lead by epically stupid AD's. Success in football (both growing and maintaining it) is more difficult than basketball based on the math and finances.

I hope we maintain the current trajectory and consistently improve our win total and prove that it can be done...but it will be difficult because the ceiling on football is inclusion into a P5, vice the NCAA success scale that matters in basketball. I trust in what Chad et al are doing.

No one here is comparing building a basketball program and building a football program. The comparison made is in regards to improved attendance through winning, nothing more.

[gostangs]

Jumping on someone for making a completely different point then the one you thought they were making is one of the purest forms of stupid there is.

[RGV Pony]

In that case there is a whole lot of stupidity in this forum

[Puckhead48E]

Multiple comments re wins directly leading to attendance increases, or not, and the impact strength of opponents had on this for basketball here and in the other 500 threads on this topic. I apologize for drawing in prior statements and extrapolating general themes from posts. [deleted], I didn't even direct my post at anyone...but since a few felt threatened by that...San Dimas high school football rules!

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[Charleston Pony]

Multiple comments re wins directly leading to attendance increases, or not, and the impact strength of opponents had on this for basketball here and in the other 500 threads on this topic. I apologize for drawing in prior statements and extrapolating general themes from posts. [deleted], I didn't even direct my post at anyone...but since a few felt threatened by that...San Dimas high school football rules!

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Having offended more than a few recently myself, it might just be time to join those who believe a strategy of scheduling schools like Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian and improving our W-L record will significantly improve attendance and that P-5 conferences will be impressed enough to invite us to the party. After all, we are located in and will surely deliver the DFW media market.

The title of this thread is about Houston opening with OU next year. I suppose they might be just a little bit ahead of us right now...if only we had dropped TCU & Baylor and scheduled more FCS schools. We would undoubtedly be just as far along in football as we are in bball.

[Puckhead48E]

Multiple comments re wins directly leading to attendance increases, or not, and the impact strength of opponents had on this for basketball here and in the other 500 threads on this topic. I apologize for drawing in prior statements and extrapolating general themes from posts. [deleted], I didn't even direct my post at anyone...but since a few felt threatened by that...San Dimas high school football rules!

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Having offended more than a few recently myself, it might just be time to join those who believe a strategy of scheduling schools like Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian and improving our W-L record will significantly improve attendance and that P-5 conferences will be impressed enough to invite us to the party. After all, we are located in and will surely deliver the DFW media market.

The title of this thread is about Houston opening with OU next year. I suppose they might be just a little bit ahead of us right now...if only we had dropped TCU & Baylor and scheduled more FCS schools. We would undoubtedly be just as far along in football as we are in bball.

I agree, but why stop there? Why not really go for it and schedule the incarnate word and lighthouse for the blind...basketball teams? I mean, we have to win those games, right?

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[CalallenStang]

2015 Tennessee Tech, Louisville, Texas State, Vandy
2014 UTSA, Grambling, BYU, UNLV
2013 Southern, Rice, UTSA, BYU
2012 Texas State, Louisiana Tech, UCLA, UNT

This is the scheduling philosophy I've said SMU should adopt. The formula is:

FCS School
P5 or BYU (this can be TCU for us)
Weaker G5 opponent (UNT for us)
G5 or low level P5 (Kansas, Vandy, Wake, Rice fit the bill here)

What part of this says schedule 4 FCS schools like Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian?

CP and Puckhead once again are misrepresenting what is being said in this thread in a desperate attempt to smear my argument.

[Charleston Pony]

In case you haven't noticed, our future schedules will look more like what you are advocating. Let's just hope those 13-1 seasons (after all, this started as a topic re: Houston's success) and a packed Ford Stadium follows. I would be very proud if we made it to a New Year's Six game in the Chad Morris era and brought a following anywhere near what Houston did. I would like nothing more than watching 30k pour into Ford to watch us play Tulane. Some of us are only trying to point out the advantages Houston has versus SMU but too many on here resort to slamming Houston as an inferior school and insist that if we would just dumb down the schedule and start winning and going to bowl games (I think the JJ era showed our challenges are a little more than that), that our attendance issues would be resolved and we would be as strong a P-5 candidate as Houston appears to be. At some point, you have to give programs like TCU and Houston credit for what they have been able to accomplish and just look in the mirror and acknowledge that SMU students and alumni just might be our biggest problem.

[CalallenStang]

CP - TCU is much more similar to SMU than it is to Houston. They are the proof that you don't need 30,000 students, lax academics, etc. to win. And while they never have had attendance issues as acute as ours, they likely would have if there was more space between the breakup of the SWC and the beginning of consistent winning for them.

I've said above that SMU fans don't show up for any opponents. Why would they? The team hasn't given anyone an indication that it can be competitive in over 30 years (even in 2011 when we beat TCU, SMU fans looked at it as if that game were a fluke because we got blown out by a not very good Texas A&M team earlier that year). We need to be able to have better talent in order to be competitive in games against stronger competition. My argument is that we will develop an ability to recruit against low-level P5s if we start putting up seasons first of 4 wins, then of 6, then of 8 with competitive losses to great programs, then to 10 with upsets of great programs. This is how TCU built their program. Recruiting is sales and in sales, effort and relationships go a long way but you have to have a unique selling proposition to close the deal - right now we are Kansas or Colorado or Vandy but in a worse conference whereas we need to be the place where you will win more than those places. Use a perceived weakness to our advantage. Like it or not, getting blown out 6 times a year doesn't mesh with that idea well. I also don't think that it will be overnight that we start seeing huge crowds. It will take years but our crowds have gotten smaller by the year from all this losing. I was one of the 500 (you can't use 1500 anymore) in the stadium for several games last season and this year wasn't much better. Games against TCU used to be sell outs (there was one in the June era with 34,000+) but we only had 23,000 there in 2014. Why? Because we had already proven we wouldn't be competitive, SMU fans for the most part stayed home. Thank God we got 32,000 for Baylor in Chad's first game of the season because by the end of the year there was no one in the stadium yet again.

You are right that SMU fans are the problem. My proposition is to have a solution to the problem. Continuing to do what we have been doing (as Stallion would like to do) is the definition of insanity - it doesn't work (yes, I realize that we changed the recruiting attitude and that will help us some but I believe further changes will help us even more for the reasons outlined above).

CP, you and I agree on what we want for the program. I've proposed a solution based on what TCU has done as well as what UH has done to the extent that it applies. You may disagree and that is fine - but don't try to extend my argument into the realm of the absurd to do so as I will call you on it every time.