Improved Gameday Experience

[Statler]

How did they get there then? Just go back that way!

Well their band got lost at Abilene.

[SMU_Alumni11]

What was good about the game day experience? It didn't seem like anything different... And what the crap was that lame mustang alley, I rather have the A/c tent known as the corral, oh well but just surprise people are actually thinking this was a huge improvement.

[FriscoChuck]

Better phone service on the Blvd. No service at all within the stadium. So whoever worked on those improvements failed. The video suggestions to post to instagram need to be stopped immediately cause that doesn't help the situation.

Mustang Alley sucks.

We had cushions installed in our season ticket seats. These cushions made the seats so uncomfortable that and so small that I will have a back strain until next weeks game. Hopefully I can get SMU to unbolt them and remove them. At least next week there will be 1000s of empty seats for me to move to.

The canon 10 minutes to kickoff was a good cue for everybody to get to seats.

TVs in the stadium were nice upgrade.

[GiddyUp]

This guy is on deck http://www.youplusdallas.com/stories/meet-roger-emrich-voice-of-the-dallas-cowboys

Great

[TidePony]

Thank you AD department for your hard work, really many good quality improvements. Cell phones still a major challenge (and of course the coaching staff).

[Insane_Pony_Posse]

No cell service at all within the stadium.

does anyone know why this happens? is it having a high concentration of people in one place which burdens a cell tower? you would think just from a PR standpoint it would be a good thing to have all the teeny-boppers checking in on the Facebooks from SMU Ford Stadium, sending out live pics of SMU football across the internet world...instead we have a blackout where people attending an SMU football game can't tell the world where they are. How can this be fixed and can it be fixed quickly? Or is it a major capital expenditure?

[DiamondM]

My two grandkids are now at SMU...thet have complained all week about cell phone service. ...and tonight ,in the stadium,it did not work to text,and barely to call...there is no improvement...it is a hazard to the students...a problem well known to the administration...just see what sort of lawsuit is filed after the next assault,if lack of service is an issue..

You've got to be kidding, right? There are plenty of things to complain about, but not being able to text or call on a cell phone creating some kind of hazard or legal liability is pretty ridiculous. Inconvenient yes.

By the way, there are actual phone placed all over campus with blue lights on top in case of emergency. No touch screen or instagram capability, but otherwise functional.

[DiamondM]

I really appreciated the 5 minute explanation on how to find both 75 AND the Tollway. I was so nervous about getting home from this distant world.

I was just waiting for her to follow with the weather report to tell me it was "hot" and "dark outside."

[Mustangs_Maroons]

I guess I just don't understand how we can't get our act together and resemble a real d1 football program. The announcer was a joke, and we couldn't have had the announcer from next week in place for the opening game on national TV? Good job!

How's it possible that you have all these Tech fans (leaving aside how trashy they behaved) all over the sidelines, at the end of the end zones, etc.? I don't recall SMU fans getting a chance to hang out right out the end zone when we're the visitors. How can we not shake our heads when after tech scored we would see their fans at the end zone jumping up and down as of this was in their stadium. Terrible.

I won't even get into the the actual football team. I thought with a walk on freshman quarerback we would be able to beat this tech team, but who am I kidding. We have be laziest coach on all d1 football. This all lies squarely on Junes shoulders. Too bad he doesn't give a rat's *** about us actually competing against FBS teams and is only collecting his $2mm annual retirement fund provided by the very SMU alums he has no interest in rewarding with putting together a competitive team. This is a shame and will continue to be. Suggest SMU just focuse on basketball and the other sports where we don't embarrass ourselves week in and week out.

[PhantomPhi]

Kudos to post game traffic control. Got out in good order.
Who the heck picked the music for between plays, some unemployed headbanger ? I would rather hear the band.
The geldings are gone. Don't mess with Peruna.

[FriscoChuck]

No cell service at all within the stadium.

does anyone know why this happens? is it having a high concentration of people in one place which burdens a cell tower? you would think just from a PR standpoint it would be a good thing to have all the teeny-boppers checking in on the Facebooks from SMU Ford Stadium, sending out live pics of SMU football across the internet world...instead we have a blackout where people attending an SMU football game can't tell the world where they are. How can this be fixed and can it be fixed quickly? Or is it a major capital expenditure?

I work for Cisco Systems; We install systems for stadiums and Olympic venues (such as London 2012) so fans are able completely interact with social media and experience multi-media technologies. This is the future of sports and NOW is the time for SMU to act. I am not certain what cell-tower improvements were made because I experienced NO improvements. Cisco predicts that the 'next big thing' in technology is the inter-connectiveness of all the i-devices that we have; the Internet of Everything. This improves the gameday experience, markets the game worldwide to all alumni and will likely market the university. This is the future!

Why does this poor coverage occur? First, the stadium was at capacity which puts more constraints on existing towers, the type of internet traffic is more bandwidth intensive (meaning people are loading more video, uploading more pictures, etc.), and many of the apps like facebook/Tapatalk consume multiple connections which overloads towers. When a tower is at over-capacity in many instances it just fails meaning no-one can connect until some engineer restarts the node (or process that manages the connections). So yeah, we just over-loaded all the towers last night.

What can be done? In high traffic games like last night there are mobile towers that can be brought in. Someone like AT&T or Verizon should coordinate this. These providers should want the extra traffic but when no one coordinates it then crap like last night happens.

SMU should immediately contract with a company like Cisco to build up infrastructure and quality of service. This is not short term or inexpensive. This takes a gameday visionary which SMU does not have in Hart or Turner.

The lowest hanging fruit is to not advertise for the crowd to upload pictures or use social media. This just burdens the systems more because when this is suggested everyone tries to perform this at the same time. This just adds unneeded stress to an over-utilized system. For the rest of the season I recommend baby steps (phone calls and basic texting.) Also, the remainder of the crowds will be half the attendance so that should immediately clear up the issues but only if we don't kill the current system with photoes and video.

hopefully a better system is in the works for the basketball arena!

[thirdcoastfisher]

Curious as to why there are blue hairs in what was supposed to be the "young alumni" section. I went down front to sit with a friend in his season tickets until my roommate arrived and our standing up and yelling was not taken to very kindly.

It's the first game, in the "young alumni" section, against a Big 12 opponent and we got yelled at for standing up and being loud.

Just to clarify for future instances of this... Is security going to take blue hair's side if we continue to stand up and be loud cheering for the Mustangs even after they ask us to sit down? I understand it isn't the most polite thing in the world to do, but I get excited at games and would prefer not to get kicked out or asked to move for rooting for my team. And to clarify, security didn't say anything to us. We sat down for a minute then I moved so I could go actually cheer somewhere else.

[couch 'em]

Don't even need cell towers. Just get some high capacity wireless access points.

SMU send me a PM. My group can design it.

[FriscoChuck]

Don't even need cell towers. Just get some high capacity wireless access points.

SMU send me a PM. My group can design it.

Yep, time SMU moves on this.

[SMULaxer]

DJ audio > somewhere over the rainbow from the band

Cell service might even keep students in the seats. It's tempting to duck out so you can figure out the rest of your night.

Also, I paid 1600 for my tailgating space by Mary hay, west of the boulevard. No less than six tech tailgates setup shop. None of them paid anything for the space.

Perhaps station people on campus and charge these people on the spot the $300 for their space. Easily could have been $30K in revenue.

In fact, if no one from SMU is there, maybe I'll stand out there and charge people.