Open Letter to PonyFans

[PerunaPunch]

I've been out of town for a week and am a bit out of the loop. But I just heard some disturbing news and thought I should pass it along. First, let me emphatically state that I'm not pointing any fingers; I know (almost) everyone on this board is here because they want the Mustangs to succeed, and we want to offer our opinions – good and bad - for the betterment of the program.

Our coaches, players, players' parents and recruits (for the most part) DO read this board. With the unfortunate way the season is turning out, the players are already catching scorn from their classmates (which is bad enough), but now many feel like they're being deserted by their real fans (us), which they take much harder. Further, our lack of support has caused at least one recruit, who was very interested in SMU, to decide to go elsewhere.

We can't afford for that to happen again. Good recruits don't really care that much about records because they believe they can come in, contribute, and turn the program around. But there are enough obstacles for the coaches to overcome selling this program without them having to make excuses for our lack of support.

What I'm asking is for us all to keep our criticism constructive. Let's not tear down the team and the coaches. Please give a little more consideration to what you say before you post something and try to keep your comments constructive.

Thanks for allowing me to rant.

[Nacho]

I am limiting myself to C-USA and the Red Sox.

[SMUFan]

I'm right there with you, Punch. We're all frustrated, but like you said, we're here on this site because we want so desperately for our team to win. If something was done wrong on the field, I'm OK with talking about it, but I see no need to blindly rip the guys who are out there busting tail for us.

I echo PP's suggestion.

Go Ponies! Beat LaTech!

[Stallion]

while that may be true we have lost many more recruits due to the fact that we are 0-9 and have the worst Football Program in America a fact that can be directly traced to the antipathy of the administration. To blame the symptoms instead of the cause ain't constructive either. As long as SMU insists upon playing on an uneven playing field you can bet I will take every chance to point out what a mess they have made of a once storied program.

[MustangStealth]

Well said, PP.

[MizterTea]

While I agree that eeryone should watch their jibba jabba ont the board - you suckas should know that ALL fan boards are just like this one. Athletes, parents & coaches should stay away!! An anonymous, open forum such as this will ALWAYS lend itself to the pi$$ed off element who feels they have something important to say (see talk radio)

Besides, I doubt seriously that anyone actually read this board and made their decision to go elsewhere - this is a VERY tame board by Internet standards. Where did this recruit go to? A&M??? UT (firemackbrown.com must be subtle). Come on!

Whereever a athlete goes there are posters who will do their worst - so why try to stop these idoic ramblings (the silly comments are great FODDER for my "art" of the web pic)

I would suggest that you use your energy to critize the fact that we have 15 threads ALL ON THE SAME TOPIC... is there a moderator in the HOUSE to lock some of these up !?!?! Just look, there are TWO IDENTICAL THREADS ABOUT THE CUSA ANNOUNCEMENT (now THAT is something tacky that we can fix !)

OK, now what weer we talking about...

<small>[ 11-04-2003, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: MizterTea ]</small>

[MrMustang1965]

Originally posted by PerunaPunch:
...the players are already catching scorn from their classmates...

PP: I agree with everything you said. However, from what I've seen at the games this year, there aren't enough students at the games to even know what's been happening on the field, let alone scorning their fellow student/athletes. I've never seen such apathy from a student body. Sad.

Thank God for the Mustang Band! :thumbupcool:

[LA_Mustang]

What??? As far as fan forums go this board is as player/coach friendly as it gets. My god, if UT, A&M, TCU or any other D-1 school was going through what we are their board would be 10 times worse than this.

[Hoop Fan]

There are two aspects to this. These boards are influential sometimes when things get bad. Too much so. Having said that, even on its worse day this board and SMU fans in general are *****cats compared to what you see at other boards. Some of you need to get out more. Just sniff around the UT site after the Oklahoma game.

[Mike Damone]

If a recruit chose to go elsewhere strictly because of what he read on this message board I'm not sure if I wanted him anyways. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. "Well, I liked everything about the school-the facilities, coaches, campus-but I got on that ponyfans message board and all those posters are pretty negative. I'm going to another school now."

If thats true someone needs to send all Texas's top recruits a link to hornfans.com, because it is ten times more brutal.

[Johnny Rock]

Peruna Punch, the blame does not lie here on this board. It does not lie with the comments posted on this board. As a matter of fact, I believe that the comments on this board are irrelevant. If the comments on this board really mattered, the admistration would read them and take action. The blame lies with SMU'S policies and lack of commitment to Division 1 athletics. You can go hear a bunch of rah-rah bull crap tomorrow at noon at the Student Center from President Turner, Copeland, and their new poster boy--Craig James. But it will not matter until the policies change regarding admissions. How in the hell does North Texas bring in more talent than SMU? It is not because of their beautiful campus, great academics, or outstanding coaches. It is because they recruit many players that SMU does not consider. SMU could easily compete and win consistently in the WAC or the new C-USA if they would change. However, until they do, we will have a carosel of coaching changes and annual rah-rah speaches like the one that will be given tomorrow. Unfortunately, the same results on Saturday will occur.

[PerunaPunch]

I understand and agree, but some of this negativity is starting to impact our recruiting.

We need two more good recruiting classes to turn this thing around (IMHO). I just don't want us, the PonyFans faithful, to become our own worst enemies.

[Nacho]

When you are 0-9 aint a lot of positive stuff you can say. At least C-USA takes up some time this week.

[Mike Damone]

If this board was limited to just positve comments, it would have to be shut down. Or we'd all have to be really high.

[MizterTea]

Originally posted by PerunaPunch:
I understand and agree, but some of this negativity is starting to impact our recruiting.

We need two more good recruiting classes to turn this thing around (IMHO). I just don't want us, the PonyFans faithful, to become our own worst enemies.

EXCUSE ME SUCKA - firemackbrown.com !!! and they STILL get the top recruits in the country - web boards cannot cost us recruits - I would suggest that even if you have been given that reason - that is more like an excuse...

PLEASE DON'T give these SUCKAS (on this board) any more credit than they deserve.

By that logic - we should have had better classes in the past when this was still the "sunshine board"