If SMU was 9-0 would Students start coming to game?

[smuhype]

If SMU was 9-0 do you think we would get to 20,000 real butts in seats?

Saturday was an embarrassment to me as a long time alumn. Many folks around me mentioned the complete no-show from the students.

Sickening.

[Stallion]

I'm not one to excuse poor turnout and they were a [deleted]' embarrassment at Kickoff but are you counting all the students that choose to sit on the grassy knoll because there are a bunch. I'm more concerned we can't sell seats from the 20-20 yards lines on East side of the stadium. We should be able to fill prime seating even on sunny side of stadium

[leopold]

Look. Here's the deal.

The students who come to games are the ones who came to school to come to the games.

It's the students who grew up caring about football in the first place that show up to the games. They are the ones who picked the 'football school' when it came time to go to college, regardless of their academic record or that of the college they picked.

As such even if we went 9-0 this year we would probably still have a problem getting students to the tenth game, depending on the opponent. Therefore it's going to take probably five years of consistent winning - at least - for students to consistently show up to football games and that is still based on the assumption that we are winning in the sixth game. And THAT idea of winning is enough wins over that five years to actually warrant attention - enough so that a high school kid looks at the school as a 'football school.'

So it's not even worth worrying about it at this point.

[SoCal_Pony]

If SMU was 9-0 do you think we would get to 20,000 real butts in seats?

Saturday was an embarrassment to me as a long time alumn. Many folks around me mentioned the complete no-show from the students.

Sickening.

You will kinda get your answer next year.

SMU will not go 9-0, but I suspect we will definitely be bowl-worthy due in large part to the weakness of our OOC opponents. Maybe we will be 6-3.

20,000 actual fans?, nope, don't see it for any conference home opponent next season.

[SMUstangs22]

Why is this a topic AGAIN. Just win. Stop worrying about the other stuff. I have tickets in 104 and I have to BEG people to come to games because we have been the biggest embarassment of a program for 3 decades. Why are we upset at student attendance? Did you see the game we just played? It was HORRIBLE. Until we win nobody will want to watch this [deleted] show even if it is free. And beating UNT types doesnt count. Houston helped but we just proved that was the anomaly.

[tristatecoog]

Being ranked in the top 25 is what does it. Maybe even top 20. See hoops.

I wonder if Western Michigan is filling up. UH did while ranked.

Masses are slow to get on the bus (Taggart reference) and get off at the 'next stop' when it's not cool anymore.

[Rebel10]

The question should be if SMU were 9-0 would more local SMU alums come to the game?

[ALEX LIFESON]

Just wait until the USF game.

[tristatecoog]

Yes, more of everyone would come. If SMU was 9-0, it would be top 10, maybe top 6, and SMU would be the talk of the town. So would HCCM.

[gostangs]

I don't know why so many people are bad at math. We have 6,500 undergrads. The highest percentage of students in the country that attend their games is probably in the SEC or maybe ND. Long time great programs playing other relevant teams, in towns with nothing else going on. I bet there isn't one of them where more than 75% go to the game - and for most it is 50% tops. If 50% of UT's students went to the game it would be 20,000 kids - I promise you there are not 20k students in their stadium, even in good years. And that is a bunch of Texans that grew up worshiping football.

SMU kids are from all over, and football is not king in California or Connecticut.

That means the best we could EVER expect would be 3,000, and we probably get 2,000 at our games until half time. Pretty dang good considering we don't play anyone typically and we haven't been good for 30 years.

Get off the students. You can judge them when the product is worth taking half your day to watch - which is coming fast.

[No Quarter]

We moved away from Dallas in 1961 and for me seeing an SMU football game has been a rare treat since. We have been lucky enough to see some neat games like beating Navy and Staubach in the Cotton Bowl and the Miracle on Mockingbird. We also saw the games when we played Tennessee in Knoxville and Dave Smith's team against OSU in Columbus. We went up there on a lark and got in to a full Ohio Stadium because we ran into Coach Smith and he gave us tickets. Been to some oddities also, like one against UTEP in El Paso and another at Wake Forest. Supreme in that funny category though was the game against one of the directional California schools (Cal State @ Northridge?) in the Cotton Bowl. In retrospect I gave the kid who sold us tickets way too much money - probably the price of a snow cone would have been enough. Certainly anyone present that day who sat in the sun that day did so by choice. I doubt that more than two thousand spectators were inside the stadium.

I can only agree that to get anyone in Ford, undergraduate, alum, Dallasite, whoever, starts with consistent wins. When that situation comes about I am sure there will be repeated threads about marketing rather than student apathy. I may not be around then but FTR I doubt that any marketing campaign will be better than during Mustang Mania/Pony Express days.

GO PONIES.

[sbsmith]

The question should be if SMU were 9-0 would more local SMU alums come to the game?

The question should be if SMU were 9-0 would Ford sell out?

[deucetz]

Until you have a few winning seasons of 10+ wins, this topic shouldn't be talked about. See TCU, and they have a bigger student body.

Dallas fans are fickle, beyond the Dallas Cowboys. They only support winners.

[sbsmith]

Until you have a few winning seasons of 10+ wins, this topic shouldn't be talked about.

This topic will be talked about until it gets fixed. All the years of attendance threads have made that abundantly clear.

[ponyinNC]

Blowout losses on homecoming are devastating...when you actually have a large base of alumni that have returned to campus for their only game all year or perhaps years, and you lay an embarrassing egg like that?? Congrats - you just lost any chance at getting those folks back.

And most stadiums around the country are filled with local t-shirt fans that just want to root for a winner. We will never capture those folks until we win consistently and in big games.