DMN: SMU makes public its desire to join Big 12

[HorsePower]

Baseball means absolutely nothing (and that has nothing to do with the fact that it isn't meant to be played with the stupid metal bats).

Want evidence of how conference realignment is about football and football only? When the last round of conference realignment discussions dominated the airwaves and message boards, people were talking about Nebraska to the Big 10, Colorado headed to the Pac-10/12, etc., and no conference had the slightest interest in Kansas. KANSAS! One of the highest-profile basketball programs in the nation that gets overhyped every March and makes a ton of money — by basketball standards — and KU hoops coach Bill Self was jumping in front of cameras and microphones whining about how "nobody wants us ... we're a school without a conference future."

Never mind the fact that the Kansas PR folks were asleep at the wheel — Self should have been coached on what to say and what not to say, or at least told to shut up and stay away from media. Self's outbursts underscored perfectly the fact that other sports — ALL other sports — are meaningless when it comes to conference realignment talks. No college baseball team rakes in anywhere near the revenue that Kansas basketball does (even though the Jayhawks bowing out early in March is annually one of the safest bets in sports), and nobody wanted KU hoops.

You really think conferences will care whether SMU or some other prospective member institution has baseball? Of course not.

[peruna81]

We're going to need a bigger Boulevard too.

now this IS relevant, and very necessary...

[Dutch]

We're going to need a bigger Boulevard too.

i realize that was in jest, but we have something that none of the big 12 schools do in the Boulevard. it's fun in its current state, but on games where we've had sellout crowds, like TCU/TT/OSU, it's been awesome. could get to Grove scale crowds which we all know was Turners vision for it when he put it in place.

and i can't even begin to imagine what my spot will cost if a move like this happens.

[NastyStang]

I am sure the Big 12 would also look at what we do attendance wise when we are not playing high profile teams. It would not look good to see vast amounts of empty seats on TV when the camera goes around when we play UCF or UTEP at home We must be able to at some point get better crowds on our own. Looks like we are headed in the right direction with everyone on the same page.

all the big 12 needs to do is look at our attendance when we have played big12 teams. in basketball & football. sellout crowds or damn close in all of those.

we would immediately need to expand and could probably fill 42000 every week w/ not only our alums who would come out to see us playing bigger caliber teams, but the 'visiting' local alums too. there are tons of OU/OSU/TT/UT/BU/etc. alums living here. our weakest attended games would be Iowa St and Kansas, and those would probably still be over 30k

This is dead on, so tired of the attendance issue talk. Why are we suffering with ticket sales this year with perhaps the best SMU team in decades? Our home schedule is absolutely horrid. Join the Big 12 and stubhub becomes a lucrative website for SMU fans (if they choose).

[WorldStang]

agreed - the stadium expansion and attendance would fix itelf with inclusion to the B12. Attendance of the away team fans would be problematic.. but we wouldn't have issues selling out a 40-45k seat stadium.

[SMU 86]

Just curious if TCU sold out their games that were not with high profile opponents. Also, I don't think it would look to good for us if when we do play high profile teams if over half the sellout crowd were from the visiting team IMO. I would think the Big 12 would want more home crowd attendance, not that it could not happen.

[Alaric]

We're going to need a bigger Boulevard too.

I'd actually hate to think about how many people would be on the Boulevard if we played UT. 50,000 outside?

I agree with Stallion here. If our goal is to be a BCS team, let's enlargen the stadium, build an IPF, hire a real marketing department and get on with it. If that's not where we want to go, let's stop the talk and be content to have what might be a really good team and let's play in front of 16,542 fans each week. Inane to say we don't have the money. It's the will that has been lacking up to this point.

[smuuth]

Anyone know when the DMN football preview section for high school, college and pro is schedulled? Ft Worth Star-Telegram was today.

[SMUer]

I thought the "40,000 alumni in Dallas" quote was pretty sobering. 40,000 alumni, maybe (maybe!) 20% can be expected to come to every home game, so there's 8,000. SMU has 6,000 undergrades, but can you really expect more than 60-70% to show up? There's 4,200. There are 5,000 grad students but they have affiliations with other schools plus are busy...so no more than 50% of those, so 2,500. SMU really only has 14,700 ready-made attendees, best case scenario. We need Dallas to "Fill Ford" because we don't have sufficient alumni here to fill it ourselves. That's why it is so asinine that we cut our marketing efforts because that is the only way we are going to get 28-30K+visiting fans. Joining a BCS would solve that in a heartbeat because it would bring in more alumni, visiting fans and non-affiliated Dallasites. But it is stupid to bank on that. We need Dallas coming out to games. Chastising alumni is, at best, only going to cause a 5%-10% bump, 2,000-4,000 fans.

[RyanSMU98]

Hey, don't knock Manhattan, KS. It's actually not a bad little town and has surprisingly good Mexican food (shocked the heck out of me when I was there). .

I'll knock Manhattan...there's nothing in Kansas west of Topeka worth discussing.

Is Topeka even really worth discussing?

[Dutch]

Just curious if TCU sold out their games that were not with high profile opponents. Also, I don't think it would look to good for us if when we do play high profile teams if over half the sellout crowd were from the visiting team IMO. I would think the Big 12 would want more home crowd attendance, not that it could not happen.

no, they have attendance problems too.

[ponydawg]

Wonder how our traveling plays into this. We travel poorly to away games and bowl games....even the ones not played in Hawaii.

[ReedFrawg]

Just curious if TCU sold out their games that were not with high profile opponents. Also, I don't think it would look to good for us if when we do play high profile teams if over half the sellout crowd were from the visiting team IMO. I would think the Big 12 would want more home crowd attendance, not that it could not happen.

no, they have attendance problems too.

We can draw around 40K now with little to no help from opposing fans. We averaged over 42K last year and no one other than Baylor brought any fans with them. At this point, if TCU had a Big 12 schedule, I think we could avg 55K+. Of course it took a decade of winning BIG to get to this point.

[72mustang1]

Win and they will come? Stanford has sold 25,000 season tickets in a 50,000 stadium with Andrew Luck back and a top ten ranked team. Though 25,000 sold is a 46% increase over last year .

[2ndandlong]

We're going to need a bigger Boulevard too.

Inane to say we don't have the money.

You are sorely mistaken.