It took more than a year, but SMU caught TCU & has one big advantage here
SMU’s first season as a power football program is not a disaster for “friend” TCU, but it is a cross-town salvo that should rattle the frog pads all over Fort Worth.
Under third-year coach Sonny Dykes, TCU will finish with a respectable record and positive momentum for 2025, but this year they were buried by SMU.
SMU will play for the ACC title with a chance to make the college football invitational. Cash can’t buy the Ponies a national title, but it puts them in a conversation TCU is familiar with since the “playoff” was created in 2014.
SMU (10-1) ended its regular season at home on Saturday against California, and next week will play for the ACC title. SMU is currently ninth in the latest playoff rankings, and would be in the 12-team postseason bracket.
TCU of the BIg 12 and SMU of the ACC are in the same spot, in leagues begging to be taken seriously as they lobby against linear television’s modern prometheus, TheBigSEC10.
Outsiders may think that SMU’s rise to its current spot is a result of an overnight cash drop, when in reality this process was a decades long investment with the hope of return it currently enjoys. This includes the construction of a football stadium that, unintentionally, is the venue that is now perfect for this generation.
A stadium that is tailored for its school, with a capacity that would be ideal for TCU whose own venue now is a bit too big.
How SMU built its ‘packed house’
Justifiably missed in SMU’s near flawless season is that while every game “is a sellout” there are more than a few times when those crowd shots show otherwise. With limited exception, these scenes litter college sports.
When planners designed Gerald J. Ford Stadium, it was done with the idea that it could expand to 45,000. The 32,000-seat venue opened in 2000, long before the internet, smart phones and streaming remade entertainment, and reduced our attention spans to seconds.
Even in the ACC, SMU has no need to follow its expansion possibility. All of the new stadiums designed, and built, today are for smaller crowds. SMU’s home is quaint, allows for fans to be close, and “on top” of the games. It creates for a packed visual that plays well on TV, and creates at least some demand for a ticket.
SMU planners may take credit for their vision, but they had no idea how the internet was going to change the world, and alter sports. What matters is that it works.
TCU’s stadium “challenge”
The NCAA’s attendance report says TCU averages about 8,000 fans more per home game than SMU, but the issue is how it looks.
When TCU defeated Arizona in its regular-season home finale on Nov. 23, the number of empty seats at Amon G. Carter Stadium was alarming. Some of it will be blamed on the fact that TCU’s Thanksgiving break began the day before, but it was a bad photo op.
The announced crowd of 42,977 was not the visual of a packed, crazy college atmosphere that is the desire of administrators, coaches trying to win recruits, and broadcast partners.
TCU’s announced average home attendance this season is 44,605, which is as accurate as your local 10-day weather forecast. These bloated figures follow the standard reporting practices of colleges that use fuzzy math for its home attendance.
For a school the size of TCU, it draws pretty well even if the numbers aren’t entirely accurate.
This trend for TCU started long before that game against Arizona. It was noticeable when TCU hosted future Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray and No. 9 Oklahoma in a Big 12 game on Oct. 20, 2018. The box score read a crowd of 45,055, but the eyeballs said that was about 8,000 to 10,000 too high.
It was a bright yellow warning sign of the challenges ahead when TCU could not fill the place up for a good Oklahoma team.
For this era of in-person sports entertainment, TCU’s stadium is big for a private school with an undergraduate enrollment of 11,049. The venue is a gem, but with a capacity of 47,000 it’s roughly 7,000 seats too many for this generation.
When TCU contemplated to re-do its football stadium, in 2010, there were discussions to potentially go to a capacity 70,000. At the time, TCU was in the midst of a run where the football team was going to the Fiesta Bowl and Rose Bowl, and had dreams of joining the Big 12 where it hosted both Texas and OU. Smarter, and cooler, heads prevailed to keep the capacity down.
In TCU’s 2022 season, when it went to the national title game, crowds were good but not once was the home stadium full, despite what the attendance reports said. That included home games against Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas State and Texas Tech.
The team was great. The stadium was great. The games were exciting. This all illustrates the challenges for schools the size of a TCU to draw people away from their living rooms, and their phones, to watch games in person.
In this era, event organizers have learned fans want a premium, or “club” seats, akin to a first class or business class airline ticket. If those are unavailable, they want to watch the game from their couch, a sports bar, or a tailgate.
The exception is if the game is Godzilla vs. King Kong, which is one of the reasons why the SEC and Big 10’s respective expansions have little to do with results and everything to do about “power” matchups.
Where do and SMU and TCU ‘rank?’
Schools such as TCU don’t use big state universities as comps as much as they do those that fit their description: Private in major metro areas that play in the NCAA’s power conferences; Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford, and now SMU.
When Stanford demolished its 85,000 football stadium after the 2004 season, the Stanford Magazine wrote, “What was once a source of pride — an arena large enough to attract a Super Bowl (as it did in 1985) — has become a liability, if not an embarrassment.
“As football crowds dwindled over the past two decades, athletics officials took measures to disguise the vast expanse of empty seats, installing a large tarp over entire sections. Last season, attendance at home games averaged about 36,000 and no game drew more than 40,000.”
That was published in July of 2005. Reduce the attendance figures mentioned above by about 10,000 or so and not much has changed here in 2024.
Below are the schools like TCU in the power conferences, with their undergraduate enrollment figures and home football stadium seating capacities.
USC: L.A. Memorial Coliseum, 77,500. Undergrad enrollment, 21,000.
University of Miami: Hard Rock Stadium, 65,326. Undergrad enrollment, 12,883
(Miami and USC’s respective home venues are, or were, home to NFL teams. Miami’s home stadium is 21 miles from its campus.)
Stanford: Stanford Stadium, 50,424. Undergrad enrollment, 8,054
TCU: Amon G. Carter Stadium, 47,000. Undergrad enrollment, 11,049
Boston College: Alumni Stadium, 44,500. Undergrad enrollment, 9,575
Vanderbilt: FirstBank Stadium, 41,000. Undergrad enrollment, 7,152
Northwestern: Ryan Field, 35,000*. Undergrad enrollment, 8,846 (* Ryan Field is slated to open in 2026)
SMU: Gerald J. Ford Stadium, 32,000. Undergrad enrollment, 7,285
Of the schools that are “alike” in the power conferences, SMU embraced “quaint” long before it was the industry trend. For most of Ford Stadium’s first 20 years, it was far too big whereas now, with the Ponies both in a power league and winning, it looks perfect.
So what does all of this mean for the SMUs and TCUs of the current college football landscape? Recognize that there are conference titles to be won and national playoff berths to be captured.
But also realize that a bulk of your fanbase will watch the games in front of their ‘75-inch wide screens on their LazyBoy recliners in their mancaves.
