18,184

[ponyte]

I think we are actually retaining more students through the entire game. We had half the number this week as we did last week, but for the most part it appeared the ones that were there yesterday stayed for the whole game.

Students attending are not going to help much with total numbers, because the student population is small. But it does help with team support. The players feel it. The players go to the students after the game to sing Varsity. It is nice if there are some there to show support.

Stadium attendance is going to have to come from the Dallas community and that will take time. The students should realize 3 hours without a taste of alcohol is not that big of a sacrifice for your school. You might actually get a job someday where they do not allow you to guzzle beer from 8 to 5.

I haven't foound it hard to get a job where I can guzzle beer all I want.

Actually, I think both games the students that attend are staying and getting into the game much more than in the past two decades.

[Pony_Fan]

Malach - that is great

[Hoofbeat83]

I think we are actually retaining more students through the entire game. We had half the number this week as we did last week, but for the most part it appeared the ones that were there yesterday stayed for the whole game.

Students attending are not going to help much with total numbers, because the student population is small. But it does help with team support. The players feel it. The players go to the students after the game to sing Varsity. It is nice if there are some there to show support.

Stadium attendance is going to have to come from the Dallas community and that will take time. The students should realize 3 hours without a taste of alcohol is not that big of a sacrifice for your school. You might actually get a job someday where they do not allow you to guzzle beer from 8 to 5.

I haven't foound it hard to get a job where I can guzzle beer all I want.

Actually, I think both games the students that attend are staying and getting into the game much more than in the past two decades.

AND actually look like they're having a lot of FUN.

[mrydel]

[quote="ponyte"I haven't foound it hard to get a job where I can guzzle beer all I want.
[/quote]
And now I know why health care costs are going up.

[skyscraper]

The issue with attendance is not the students.
It was insanely hot if you were on the east side of the stadium (me and a buddy endured the entire game in 123).
Frankly, 18k isn't that bad for where we are as a program right now considering the heat and the opponent. I thought for sure the number would be lower considering who we were playing.

[PoconoPony]

Game time was fairly hot and anyone on the sunny side had to be very uncomfortable no matter where you are from or what weather you think you can handle. I am fairly confident that there were fewer than 12,000 actually in the stands. Place was quite empty. I cannot blame the students; however, they took up 2 full sections for the UAB game with the band occupying 1/2 of a 3d section. Yesterday the students did not fill up a full section in total. I think the "vard" activities and attendance would be much better and more fun with all Saturday night games. The day time heat might be a home field advantage ( I know the radio guys mentioned WSU team fading in the second half ), but we need some bodies in the seats.

[ponyte]

No doubt the time of the game and heat affected attendance. Had that been SMU against TCU, it would not have sold out. Maybe against UT or A$M just due to shear numbers of alums in the area.

One student didn't leave the game at half time but moved to the west side. The heat was just too much for her.

This game wasn't about attendance. The powers that be knew we were sacrificing attendance for national media exposure.

Watching the TV replay, I think we got some very good pub. Great shots of the campus and Leach was generous in his comments about SMU. The comments by the announcers were positive as was the result of the game. The D had heros as did the O.

So yes attendance wasn't stellar but the overall exposure was positive.

[Pony ^]

Heat is a typical Aggy excuse

[RednBlue11]

Heat is a typical Aggy excuse

false.

and 230 game times are awful

glad to know that the AD have one-up'd themselves with a worse idea by giving is a 2pm game in Nov.

[PlanoStang]

by soccermom » Sun Sep 19, 2010 7:07 am
Yes, the stadium looked very empty. The few times they showed our cheerleaders they were just standing around.......they showed the 2 horses but I never saw Peruna....the band sounded great....and the campus shots looked really pretty. When they showed Bob Hope Theater, Mike Leach's comment was that he didnt' know Bob Hope had gone to SMU. Leach wasn't a very exciting voice to listen to, but he loved our defensive guy (have forgotten his name but his first two initials are on his jersey w/his last name and he is from Crockett) and kept bragging about him. Great exposure.

Hope Leach's remarks about Bob going to SMU were a joke. ..... well it might be some
Clintonesque spin/false good exposure.

by FIVE-O-FAN » Sun Sep 19, 2010 8:57 am
I can't understand it myself. This team plays an exciting brand of football and is certainly on the right track. It seems as though the students would want to be a part of it. As a student, what else are you doing from 2-6pm on a Saturday. Apprently there was something pretty big at 4:30, because half of them cleared out of the 14-14 game to attend it. Frustrating...

That something BIG was the temperature at 95 degrees After 2+ hours of baking in the
sun with temps reaching 110+ in the concrete, and metal bleachers, maybe they needed to leave or
pass out. I wish the phonyFans on here would just bail out

BTW, my brother is a 7 year survivor of melanoma on his scalp. With my blue eyes, and fair skin, I
moved up to top row to find a shady seat before the game.

The crowd did look larger than last week. I noticed a Washington State "tailgate" tent at the hotel near Mockingbird Station Station when we took the shuttle to she stadium. It looked to me to be around 18.6K, and I've seen a lot of ACCURATE 9.1K crowds when we played the lesser teams from far away in the WAC, and C-USA, etc. That's getting to a 100 percent improvement from the Cavan / Bennett years

[ponyte]

By Nov, one wants to play during the day. The lighting is so much better than under lights. The temp is usually perfect. Warm but not hot. Crisp with less humidity.

Usually, decades ago, we played our last weekend in Oct as an afternoon game, From then on, afternoon games are the preferred time. Game-time temps are usually in the mid 70s. the sky is clear but the sun is at an angle that heat isn't an issue.

By late Oct. early Nov, I gauge the beauty of the day by the Longhorn scale, even to this day. If the temp is mid 70s, the sky with just a few drifting clouds, I consider it a great day to beat the Horns! A 2 PM kickoff in Nov to me is perfection. Strange how I will go walk to work and gauge a day by the Longhorn scale. I hate to work indoors when it is a marvelous fall day just perfect for beating the Horns.

And in the fall, no day is better than a great day to beat the Horns! And there is rarely a day in late Oct or Nov that isn't great for beating the Horns. that is the gift of Dallas. Tx weather for our Ponies in the fall.

[Mustangsabu]

There are over 10,000 students at SMU in total, I believe (though I may be wrong) but the students are not the issue. Their attendance will increase with general attendance. It would be nice to have 4-5k of them, and when we are playing big teams in big games we probably will. I think we just need to stop whining about attendance and just keep going to the games. We just need to work on the support we give them. Stand and yell on opponent's third downs, get into the stands BEFORE the start of the game, little things like that.

The fans will come eventually, but they will always be fickle. We are the faithful.

[NavyCrimson]

Charleston Pony: "...time to reach into the Russ Potts bag of tricks."

Totally agree. Since he left, all those great programs died. So sad because there is no one to blame but the administration - NOT THE SPECTATORS (CUSTOMERS)!!!

This thing is going to take upwards of 10 years to build a whole new fan base but with the correct marketing programs, it could take far less.

[SMUer]

There are 10K students only if you count graduate students. Graduate students have more important things than football on their plates. Personally, I think we'd be hard-pressed to expect anything over 5K undergraduates at our games, even when we are winning consistently. The rest is going to have to come from alumni and the Dallas community.

[NavyCrimson]

Exactly. From what I've heard, 'undergraduates' have their loyalties to their undergraduate schools anyway.