AD Hart Should Give Away Tickets To Fill The Stands

[East Coast Mustang]

Going forward, we have to schedule well OOC. Having Baylor, TCU, and UNT at Ford in alternating years will help. I wish for the fourth OOC game we would get another team from a P5 conference, but apparently the plan is for two "marquee" games each year (which I assume to be TCU and Baylor) and two "local games" each year which I guess is UNT and an FCS school. Hopefully in the future the FCS school will at least be one that will travel well here, such as SFA or SHSU, rather than freaking Montana State

[slapon]

The majority of Dallasites are going to want to watch the longhorns on TV or some kind of major SEC or Big 10 game. Television is killing us. When I was a young man there was 1 ESPN game a week and it was replayed several times until the next week's game. Now you have a game on almost every night, and several on the weekend. We have people setting up on the Blvd with big screens and they sit out there and watch the TV games rather than going inside of the stadium. What is it going to take to get a person or a family to come and watch an SMU game? Not sure what the answer is but you could drop a million free tickets from the sky over Dallas and the crowd will be the same until we have a product that will draw them away from the TV for an interesting and meaningful game.

We had a bus brigade a few years ago where we gave away tickets to local churches or schools to bring in several bus loads of new spectators. I was dumb enough to participate monetarily. Most of the buses sat empty because no one wanted to come.

I do not have the answer. SMU has not drawn their own fans in my life time. Sure there were some big give aways in the past. Where are those fans now? But you have to give them a reason to come because there are plenty of people doing plenty of things in Dallas on Saturdays that cost a lot more than a ticket to an SMU game.

Picking up on what myrdel and others have posted, simply giving out tickets to local churches and schools and offering free bus rides will not work unless there is an incentive for people to come. I would like to revisit an idea I had shared a couple of years ago to have SMU to partner with local churches, where we could coalesce the various church choirs into one large choir with the intent for them to provide musical entertainment during the pregame, halftime and/or postgame periods.

We would, in turn, also ask the churches to promote the games to their congregations during their Sunday services, where they would motivate their congregation to attend the games to offer support for their church and for SMU. We could also make it easy for the church congregations to attend by making certain ticket packages available to the various churches that participate.

Friends, family and members of the church congregations will attend the games to offer their support and loyalty to the members of their respective church’s choir and they will reciprocate our outreach to them in developing an emotional bond to the university.

We could begin with the Methodist church that is on campus and expand from there. It does not have to be comprised of any one church denomination, so long as they share a core belief. Doing this will promote a family friendly atmosphere, give the local community a tie-in with the team, provide additional entertainment for the fans and potentially could begin a tradition for SMU that is unique throughout the college landscape.

[Stallion]

MYF Day used to be a pretty big deal. I remember in the Cotton Bowl they used to get about 3-5,000 to sit in endzone

[slapon]

MYF Day used to be a pretty big deal. I remember in the Cotton Bowl they used to get about 3-5,000 to sit in endzone

What is MYF day?

[Stallion]

Methodist Youth Fellowship-the youth organization of the Methodist Church. We used to have hundreds of buses bringing in thousands of Methodists from all over Texas. I remember it more at the Cotton Bowl but it was a standard SMU promotion for decades. I know Baylor does it too

[slapon]

Methodist Youth Fellowship-the youth organization of the Methodist Church. We used to have hundreds of buses bringing in thousands of Methodists from all over Texas. I remember it more at the Cotton Bowl but it was a standard SMU promotion for decades. I know Baylor does it too

I did not know that. Thanks for sharing.

[mrydel]

I believe they have had some MYF days at Ford but nothing more than a few hundred in the end zone. Small clusters of kids. Not anything like the Cotton Bowl days.

[MustangStealth]

MYF Day used to be a pretty big deal. I remember in the Cotton Bowl they used to get about 3-5,000 to sit in endzone

MILF Day could draw a big crowd too.

[slapon]

I believe they have had some MYF days at Ford but nothing more than a few hundred in the end zone. Small clusters of kids. Not anything like the Cotton Bowl days.

The small difference with what I have suggested is that the churches will be given an opportunity to promote themselves by performing at the game day venue. They have an incentive to make a good showing at the game, where their church's participation in the choir will be broadcasted over the PA system. A large participation in the choir and shout out from their congregation sitting in the stands will reflect positively on the church to the community. It is a win-win for all involved.

[GiddyUp]

I believe they have had some MYF days at Ford but nothing more than a few hundred in the end zone. Small clusters of kids. Not anything like the Cotton Bowl days.

FCA night and somehow we messed that up too

[GRGB]

The majority of Dallasites are going to want to watch the longhorns on TV or some kind of major SEC or Big 10 game. Television is killing us. When I was a young man there was 1 ESPN game a week and it was replayed several times until the next week's game. Now you have a game on almost every night, and several on the weekend. We have people setting up on the Blvd with big screens and they sit out there and watch the TV games rather than going inside of the stadium. What is it going to take to get a person or a family to come and watch an SMU game? Not sure what the answer is but you could drop a million free tickets from the sky over Dallas and the crowd will be the same until we have a product that will draw them away from the TV for an interesting and meaningful game.

We had a bus brigade a few years ago where we gave away tickets to local churches or schools to bring in several bus loads of new spectators. I was dumb enough to participate monetarily. Most of the buses sat empty because no one wanted to come.

I do not have the answer. SMU has not drawn their own fans in my life time. Sure there were some big give aways in the past. Where are those fans now? But you have to give them a reason to come because there are plenty of people doing plenty of things in Dallas on Saturdays that cost a lot more than a ticket to an SMU game.

And every game is on tv for smu, plus it was 100

[1983 Cotton Bowl]

It was before my time, but I have heard that SMU struggled with attendance at a lot of home games even when we fielded a national championship calibur product in the early 1980s. Attendance has always been the 800 lb gorilla for SMU. And cracking that is only going to get harder, not easier, regardless of the quality of the on-field product. There are so many headwinds against attendance in today's world (TV, ticket prices, other entertainment options, TV, hassle of game day logistics, TV. . .did I mention TV?). My understanding is that attendance is leveling off around the NCAA in general, and in many places is trending downward. Makes perfect sense to me when the younger generation has no attention span and wants to multitask on 5 things at once, while the older generation would rather watch from the comfort of their own living rooms on 65 inch HD sets with cocktail in hand.

The only attendance success stories I have ever heard of at SMU are: (1) the early years in the 1920s-1940s when there were no Cowboys and literally nothing to do in Dallas on a Saturday; (2) for one year in 1978 with Mustang Mania; and (3) when we play a big state school that fills the stadium for us. I hesitate to criticize Hart for attendance when no one else has ever been able to win that battle consistently.

[Pony ^]

The fact that Hart is being blamed for a pathetic fan base...

[mrydel]

Hart has done more to improve the game day atmosphere than I have seen in the last 10 years. I am giving him an A so far. What will be telling is when he needs to make a hire.

[BIGHORSE]

Hart has done more to improve the game day atmosphere than I have seen in the last 10 years. I am giving him an A so far. What will be telling is when he needs to make a hire.

He won't be making a hire, that is Turner's job.