Hart/SID/anyone - what can us out of town fans do to help?

[East Coast Mustang]

Tarping the endzone is bush league. Take out the top level of the end zone and make it a party area with an awning, full bar, big screen TVs showing other games, cooling mist machines during hot games, etc. It would quickly become the most popular area in the stadium besides the club level

[feelthehorsepower]

Tarping the endzone is bush league. Take out the top level of the end zone and make it a party area with an awning, full bar, big screen TVs showing other games, cooling mist machines during hot games, etc. It would quickly become the most popular area in the stadium besides the club level

We would be better off doing an all out renovation a la TCU or Baylor...but I doubt we can get alumni to put up $150 million for a renovated 50k capacity stadium with nice concourse that can fit 50k+ people like TCU's and an awesome champions club area.

All that for 15k fans...lol

[feelthehorsepower]

http://gofrogs.cstv.com/facilities/tcu- ... tball.html

Their house is nice...average attendance 42k people. Mostly Fort Worth community.

[East Coast Mustang]

We would be better off doing an all out renovation a la TCU or Baylor...but I doubt we can get alumni to put up $150 million for a renovated 50k capacity stadium with nice concourse that can fit 50k+ people like TCU's and an awesome champions club area.

All that for 15k fans...lol

Seriously- how stupid are you? Yeah, let's spend $150M on a 50,000 seat renovation when we don't draw 15k to our beautiful stadium as it is.

[feelthehorsepower]

We would be better off doing an all out renovation a la TCU or Baylor...but I doubt we can get alumni to put up $150 million for a renovated 50k capacity stadium with nice concourse that can fit 50k+ people like TCU's and an awesome champions club area.

All that for 15k fans...lol

Seriously- how stupid are you? Yeah, let's spend $150M on a 50,000 seat renovation when we don't draw 15k to our beautiful stadium as it is.

Did you not see the sarcastic tone? It's a joke, lighten up!

[SMUer]

Tarping the endzone is bush league. Take out the top level of the end zone and make it a party area with an awning, full bar, big screen TVs showing other games, cooling mist machines during hot games, etc. It would quickly become the most popular area in the stadium besides the club level

$5,000 vs. $1,000,000...I'm coming from the stand point that we cannot even afford pants to go along with our blue jerseys.

[mrydel]

Why don't we just get the yellow shirts to ask the 30 people in the end zone to move to the east side? Now I have saved even the $5,000.

[malonish]

Did you not see the sarcastic tone? It's a joke, lighten up!

You forgot to write in Sarcastic Sans font.

[SMUer]

Because now we have a whole section of empty seats, which is the problem we are trying to fix in the first place...tarping may sound like a white flag but at least planned-for on TV. Ford is like Restaurant Birthday Party where you reserved too many tables and not enough guests showed up. Bunch those that did cone together, and put your gifts on the un-used tables and it doesn't look so pathetic.

[Charleston Pony]

Why don't we just get the yellow shirts to ask the 30 people in the end zone to move to the east side? Now I have saved even the $5,000.

a tarp with a logo like your avatar would do the trick and we won't need yellow shirts patrolling that endzone. Some may say it's bush league, but so is the camera showing about 1,000 - 2,000 people spread out all over the east side of Ford

[PoconoPony]

I also live 1500 miles away and have had season tickets for a number of years despite seeing no more than 2 games a year. The crowds have been quite disappointing and I am not sure what the remedy might be. First observation, the team looked absolutely out coached, out schemed, out talented and totally not competitive during the first 4 games. Interest nose dived. All fans who follow SMU football had much higher expectations in this 6th year of JJ as head coach. His total lack of recruiting affects everything including his ability to coach, call a game, have depth and be competitive Second observation, the AAC is a terrible alignment of good schools who have little in common and with very limited regional alumni. People in the north east have no awareness of SMU and Texas people would have no awareness of Temple or UConn....etc.but for basketball. The conference is too spread out and far away that fans cannot justify traveling to more than 1 or 2 away games. There is very small chance that any rivalries can be developed. SMU has a history with Navy and Houston and those will be our rivalries unless Tulane and Tulsa can become competitive. The rest of the AAC games are merely strangers passing in the night. That is the reason our non-conference schedule is so critical to re-establish old SWC rivalries and fill Ford Stadium with regional fans. The schedule makers realized this fact when this year's schedule was completed 6/9 years ago. JJ was then to make us competitive and top 25. We are not competitive with any good programs, JJ does not recruit, we are not top 25, we cancel out Baylor and punt on roughly $ 2 million in revenues and a full house accepting the fact that we are not competitive, AAC teams do not travel and neither does SMU and now our fan base accepts a poor product and starts making excuses that the schedule is too difficult.

I cancelled my annual trip to Dallas seeking to see games on consecutive weekends simply as matter of personal protest over cancelling Baylor plus the fact that I had absolutely no interest in Montana State a Div. II program. I had high interest in Baylor and that was the ticket I thought I was buying and that had been advertised. Montana State proved to be an excellent team and the Ponies were the most lucky team in the country that weekend to win that game mainly on luck. We are a good Div. II program.

Bottom line is that there is no solution for interest in SMU football as the AAC is currently constructed. There is simply no interest in most of the conference teams plus there is little prospect for the creation of rivalries and fan interest Yes, winning with a consistent effort will generate some enhanced interest, but the conditions are not right for the fan base and interest we would all like. ( To digress: I noted that there were no more than 35 students in the student section after half time of the UConn game which we were winning. I have no solution for an apathetic student body.. Maybe SMU does not deserve to play football and should become strictly a basketball school and join the Catholic Big East. ) Unfortunately, the old SWC was the perfect fit. Until the Big 12 expands to include and reunite dropped SWC teams we will always struggle to be any semblance of the program we all seek.

[East Coast Mustang]

If we had beaten Tech or TCU (both games were within reach at the half), we would've generated interest and momentum for the rest of our schedule. Not saying we'd be selling out Ford against UConn, but more people would give a [deleted].

Until we beat teams people have heard of, the apathy will continue

[Rayburn]

We would be better off doing an all out renovation a la TCU or Baylor...but I doubt we can get alumni to put up $150 million for a renovated 50k capacity stadium with nice concourse that can fit 50k+ people like TCU's and an awesome champions club area.

All that for 15k fans...lol

Seriously- how stupid are you? Yeah, let's spend $150M on a 50,000 seat renovation when we don't draw 15k to our beautiful stadium as it is.

feel is a UH fan (Cougar King with a different ID)

[mrydel]

So you might want to make up your mind. First you want to save money from what was a promotional suggestion and second you want to save face from a lack of fans perspective. Why don't we just try to get people to fill the seats.

We have a 34,000 seat stadium and we think we need to tarp off sections to not show empty seats. I say we work to fill the empty seats. Do not compare to Rice in an 80,000 seat stadium. If we were still in the Cotton Bowl or Jerry's house, maybe, but we are talking 34,000 seats. Please.

[TidePony]

So you might want to make up your mind. First you want to save money from what was a promotional suggestion and second you want to save face from a lack of fans perspective. Why don't we just try to get people to fill the seats.

We have a 34,000 seat stadium and we think we need to tarp off sections to not show empty seats. I say we work to fill the empty seats. Do not compare to Rice in an 80,000 seat stadium. If we were still in the Cotton Bowl or Jerry's house, maybe, but we are talking 34,000 seats. Please.

Exactly.