With three full years of experience at SMU, I’ve come to notice several trends amongst the student body. Weekends tend to start on Thursdays, sorority girls own more T-shirts and pins than I own shoes, walking through the grass is to be avoided at all costs, 6 a.m. fire alarms often bring about the best walk of shames and no one makes it from the Boulevard into Ford Stadium.
It baffles me that students fail to attend football games when you see other colleges who are turning away students because of stadium capacities. Take the University of Texas or the University of Southern California for example, hundreds, if not thousands, of students are turned away on a weekly basis upon trying to enter Texas Memorial Stadium or the Los Angeles Coliseum. Try to get in Ford Stadium even seconds before kickoff though and you find members of the athletic department bribing and begging students to fill the seats.
Every Saturday the Mustangs play at home, I hopelessly ask my friends if they are going to the game. Enthusiastically, they tell me they will be “Boulevarding,” but don’t plan on making the five-minute walk to the stadium. I know some students have other favorite teams they would rather cheer on, but between iPhones, BlackBerrys and the score updates flashing across the screen in the stadium, students can still check in on their favorite teams while still showing some Pony Pride.
So, in a last effort to get students (and faculty, staff and other members of the SMU and Dallas community) out to Ford Stadium, I’ve compiled a list of reason’s why SMU football needs to become the Hilltop’s favorite pastime.
I’ll start with the most obvious: SMU, for the first time since 1996 has a 2-0 record. That’s double our wins from last season. Also note last weekend’s win over the University of Alabama at Birmingham was SMU’s first win in Conference USA since 2006.
Second, should SMU win this weekend (which, let’s face it, we know they will), the Mustangs will be 3-0. The last time SMU was 3-0 was in 1984. Know what else happened that year? SMU went on to defeat the Aloha Bowl against Notre Dame. That was also the same year SMU went 6-2 in the Southwest Conference, leading to a 31-28 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks and giving the Mustangs a piece of the conference title.
Just a side note, Washington is 0-2. Their starting quarterback is not expected to play this weekend. SMU, undefeated on the road, will have sophomore quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, running back Shawbrey McNeal and senior wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders suited up. If I lived in Vegas, I would say the odds are in our favor.
Third, and I may be going out on a bit of a limb here, but it’s only in hopes of getting people to show up at the next home game. Should SMU defeat Washington State, we will be one of ten undefeated teams in the country (according to ESPN.com polls). Maybe, if AP voters are feeling generous, SMU could see its name in the Top 25.
