Attendance Facts / Answers

[MustangSTATS]

Failed attempt at a joke. They said earlier about branding the school and that SMU needs to do the same thing. I just saying we need to be a little different since UTSA is kind of a dumb kid school.

Exact line of thinking we should be fighting against. Need SMU to be seen as accessible and approachable. We aren't dumbing ourselves down, we are opening up to the community. If anything we have to fight the pretentious (over entitled and exclusively white) attitude that people associate with SMU if we want to get local non alumni to come to games. People will not go where they don't feel welcomed.


Pony in SA, thanks for the insight.

[LHS81]

How many people you think will show up to watch ASU-SMU? My guess is the crowd will be announced over 20,000, but probably 10,000-12,000 are actually in the stands.

[SMU_Alumni11]

Failed attempt at a joke. They said earlier about branding the school and that SMU needs to do the same thing. I just saying we need to be a little different since UTSA is kind of a dumb kid school.

Exact line of thinking we should be fighting against. Need SMU to be seen as accessible and approachable. We aren't dumbing ourselves down, we are opening up to the community. If anything we have to fight the pretentious (over entitled and exclusively white) attitude that people associate with SMU if we want to get local non alumni to come to games. People will not go where they don't feel welcomed.


Pony in SA, thanks for the insight.

Oh no again I was just trying at the playful humor. I know Texas is a good school academically but they make it so the hicks around Austin feel like they can be there. We need to have the similar approach. SMU needs to be less snobby and elitist and more Christian, Family, Accepting community feel.

[redandtheblue]

I asked Orsini about this tonight. He said they let the whole marketing staff go due to cut backs related to the economy and budget cuts. He said with the new Big East money coming in, they plan on investing a lot of it on marketing.

[SMU_Alumni11]

I asked Orsini about this tonight. He said they let the whole marketing staff go due to cut backs related to the economy and budget cuts. He said with the new Big East money coming in, they plan on investing a lot of it on marketing.

Awesome, i think news like that needs its own thread.

[MustangSTATS]

I asked Orsini about this tonight. He said they let the whole marketing staff go due to cut backs related to the economy and budget cuts. He said with the new Big East money coming in, they plan on investing a lot of it on marketing.

good to hear

[SoCal_Pony]

Here is the thing about SMU and attendance

We are one of only 12 cities in America with 4 professional sports teams

Boston
Chicago
DALLAS
Denver
Detroit
Miami
Minneapolis
New York City
Philadelphia
Phoenix
San Francisco
Washington DC

How many small private schools located in the cities above have thriving football programs? Only 1 stands out. Plus we are the ONLY school that has to compete with America’s Team.

A real uphill battle getting the casual Dallas fan to support SMU, in large part due to the perception that the product is 2nd rate. If SMU was ranked in the Top 10 and played a home game against any of our C-USA eastern opponents, I doubt we could get 25k in attendance. Even after 5 consecutive bowl appearances. Not much of a conversation point on Monday morning at work to say, ‘I saw a good SMU team trounce UAB this weekend’. Yet when we last played TCU at Ford, it was a full crowd and surprisingly very pro-SMU, not half purple as many had thought. It was considered more of an ‘event’ and therefore drew the SMU crowd. BE will improve our stature and our attendance, but not by that much (see future mate UCF attendance this year as an example).

So here is my solution to solving the attendance riddle.

Be very very competitive in BE. Hope that one day the Big XII or better yet, the SEC comes calling.

Either membership would solve our attendance problems. Not only because of the attendance boost these schools would provide, but more importantly because casual Dallas fans as well as less dedicated SMU alumni would view these games as ‘events’ and would attend. Then a 52k Ford stadium would make sense. Until then, keep Ford as it is, other than suite upgrades.

[NickSMU17]

Northwestern never drew until musso and fitzgerald took them to rose bowl.

[SoCal_Pony]

Oh, and to further prove my theory, see what happens when SMU plays some of its new BE mates in BB. Moody will be rocking, especially if we field a competitive team.

[Pony_Law]

you are spot on about how being a small school hurts our attendance. Ut has 40k student and 10K people working there multiply those number by 4 for maily members and you have 200,000 people with a direct connection to the team in any given year. SMU has 28,000. And of course this isn't even counting the number of alumni and former employees Ut has compared to SMU. Also the only games played in austin are UT games.

The other real problem is we are not winning enough, period. Sure as smu fans we see bowl games and are like hey come watch smu there pretty good now. we have been in the dessert for 20 years so the warm flat beer of 7-5 gets us drunk but to casual college fb fans it's warm flat beer and gross. regular fans do not care about who qualifies for the crappy bowls. They care about the teams that are playing to go to the big bowls and games that might cost a team at an oppertunity at a big bowl. We get that with BE membership but the BE has been so mediocre for the last 5 years it will still take time for this market to start to care.

Finially, we are dallas and dallas fans need bigger winning than 7-5 to buy in. If june wants to see buts in the seats have 2 or 3 10 win seasons in a row. Instead he see's dissapointing numbers against UCF thinks whats the point and decided to phone in the rest of the year (which is exactly what this team did)

[Pony ^]

Does SMU even target recent graduates that are still in the area to get season tickets? Multi-year packages seem like a great idea. Plenty of colleges in major cities that have gotten butts in seats. Why didn't June demand marketing? I guess because then he couldn't blame lack of attendance.

They do not. I have been asked to donate to the school...but not to buy tickets for sports. I wouldn't even know they offered season ticket packages if I didn't read PF.

[MustangSTATS]

Does SMU even target recent graduates that are still in the area to get season tickets? Multi-year packages seem like a great idea. Plenty of colleges in major cities that have gotten butts in seats. Why didn't June demand marketing? I guess because then he couldn't blame lack of attendance.

They do not. I have been asked to donate to the school...but not to buy tickets for sports. I wouldn't even know they offered season ticket packages if I didn't read PF.

This is what I figured. Having siblings from other schools, I am amazed how much better at connecting to young alumni they are. Game in your area, how about a ticket. Big game at the alma matter, why not a weekend trip? Season tickets are worth the three big games you want to see anyways; sign up now.

[PK]

I think many in Dallas probably still see SMU as rich kids school, not the case with UTSA.

The reality is that most people in the DFW Metroplex do not know...
1. What SMU is ...and
2. Where it is.

The population explosion in this area over the past 20 years has been mostly due to people from out of state moving in. They have no knowledge of the old SWC and thus no knowledge of SMU.

In real estate, it is Location, Location, Location.

In sports entertainment, it is Marketing, Marketing, Marketing...of which we do zip, zero, nada.

In every normal business, you have to spend money to make money. Having a Hawaiian god as your football coach is no substitute for good marketing.

[SMU21TCU10]

Another problem is it seems that about 40% of SMU students are from out of state, and I would imagine a lot leave Texas after graduating. Whereas people who graduate from UH probably are from, and still live in Texas.

[MustangSTATS]

I think many in Dallas probably still see SMU as rich kids school, not the case with UTSA.

The reality is that most people in the DFW Metroplex do not know...
1. What SMU is ...and
2. Where it is.

The population explosion in this area over the past 20 years has been mostly due to people from out of state moving in. They have no knowledge of the old SWC and thus no knowledge of SMU.

Sounds like a great chance to re-brand ourselves properly free of any misconceptions and stereotypes