Congratulations to the SMU football team on winning their first home game of the season. Boo on the student body for not sticking around after half-time to actually witness the Mustangs’ first season win.
As usual, hitting the boulevard became the top priority for almost every SMU student, faculty member and alumi. Then again, it wasn’t all that surprising, that the student section shrunk to about half the size it was at kick off as the Mustang band took the field after the first 30 minutes of play.
The white-out effect seemed to work well, but when only about a half of the original students from the beginning are left standing in the first three rows, it looks more like a pack of ghosts than true football fans.
So what gives to the students not wanting to hang around for the second half of the game? Here we have a brand new coach, a fairly decent freshman quarterback, a beautiful stadium and free seats, and yet students can’t get their mind around the thought of hanging out in Ford Stadium for an entire football game.
The night before, the marketing department attempted to pump up students with a pep rally outside the stadium, but with less than 100 students showing up, it’s a safe assumption this event was a flop.
Head coach June Jones gave a two-minute speech followed by no more than one-minute monologues by the team captains, but it still wasn’t enough to encourage students to think that this is the year to turn SMU football around.
We commend the marketing department for their effort, but with conflicting published start times, no Mustang band present, and a lack of effort on the football team’s part to hang around for more than ten minutes, it’s pretty hard to get a non-football oriented school in the spirit.
There may have been a better turnout at the start of the game than we saw last season, but when students saw the line just to get to the seats, many turned back to frat row. What we don’t understand is, wouldn’t you want to go to a game with a longer line and more fan support? Think about it this way, for each person that turned back and refused to wait in line, that was one fewer person who would have been willing to stick it out to the end of the game.
If this weekend’s game was a preview of all we have to look forward to in terms of crowd support, we are going to be put to shame when TCU visits us in two weeks. Hopefully with one win under their belt, the football team can encourage more fans to leave behind the boulevard at kick off, and remain in their seats till the final seconds run out.
