Not clear to me that an undefeated SMU could fill Ford...

[smuhype]

May not be possible.

Pray we get into a big boy conference someday.

[Pony_Law]

You need sustained success. Put together 4 straight 9+ winning seasons a few conference championships and bowl success and you would see positive movement on attendance. We need to crest thenpreception that we consistently put our high quality football to attract the casual Dallas fan.

[sbsmith]

May not be possible.

Pray we get into a big boy conference someday.

Possible but not likely, to fill Ford for a conference game not only would we need to be ranked and undefeated, we'd also need an evening kickoff and perfect weather.

[TidePony]

Last year according to the NCAA SMU averaged 19,383 folks for football. This year we are averaging over 23,300 (with Homecoming and Tulane yet to be played). This is going in the right direction. Hopefully we have a huge crowd for Homecoming and drive the numbers up higher!

[Nacho]

Temple should have been a sellout but the average Dallas area resident has no clue where Temple is located, their record or basically anything at all about them. All they know are Cowboys and Big 12 teams.

[SMULaxer]

Last year according to the NCAA SMU averaged 19,383 folks for football. This year we are averaging over 23,300 (with Homecoming and Tulane yet to be played). This is going in the right direction. Hopefully we have a huge crowd for Homecoming and drive the numbers up higher!

Love the optimistic view! This is the beginning. A casual 20% bump in attendance is strong. How many of your businesses get that YoY growth?

[SMU_Alum11]

I believe it XC that said the Houston Astros was empty on their world series run (even win?) and it wasnt until the following season they started getting a fanbase. Similar to the rangers and losing seasons now has caused globe life to be abandoned.

[Nacho]

Pye gets the blame for our long national nightmare. But Turner was president for 13 years before any meaningful changes were instituted under June. Now Turner is all behind SMU football as important to the university.

[03Mustang]

I think Tulane could be very good if we are undefeated. Last game usually means ford is a morgue but if we can win out to then I think we pull in a lot of casual fans. Dallas loves a winner.

[Charleston Pony]

I think Tulane could be very good if we are undefeated. Last game usually means ford is a morgue but if we can win out to then I think we pull in a lot of casual fans. Dallas loves a winner.

Thanksgiving games on SMU campus are historically very poorly attended. Better start giving away tickets now

[Charleston Pony]

We had poorly attended games at Texas Stadium in the Pony Express era and the excuse then was too far off campus. Now that we have a smaller venue on campus, the students appear to be coming out in pretty good numbers but the problem now is that SMU has produced 30 years of apathetic alumni

[SMU_Alum11]

I think Tulane could be very good if we are undefeated. Last game usually means ford is a morgue but if we can win out to then I think we pull in a lot of casual fans. Dallas loves a winner.

Our biggest concern is:

Gameday coming to Memphis, full blue Memphis stadium who mauled Tulane to death last night with conference title on the line.

If we somehow beat them, we will win every game including the championship.

[Pony81]

30 years of abysmal football are not cured in 2 months.... it’ll take some sustained success over a few years before we start selling out.

[smubrooks]

Dollar beer and hotdogs would do the trick!

[Topper]

Two thoughts: Many of you were around during the early 80s. We played in front of an awful lot of empty seats but attendance was still up compared to a game in the 70s against Rice when 6,000 fans filled the Cotton Bowl. I have trouble seeing regular attendance over 25K in a typical year unless we move up in conference.Decades of cellar dwelling is soul killing and a little success will bring back some of our base, but Dickerson and James could only get us up to respectable attendance if we were playing SWC foes that people cared about.

Second: Do we give students free tickets? I know that several American schools including UCF and Houston make them available for every game.No reason we couldn't reserve a nice midfield section on the student side and move the band over a little bit toward mid field. Baylor fills up the bottom rows of the away side with their undergrads which looks good on camera.