Really? In SMU's heyday before the death penalty, they had a hard time attracting 30k fans per game unless they were playing Texas or Texas A&M. The poor fanbases at TCU, Houston, SMU, and Rice is why they were left behind when the Big 12 was formed.
BTW, SMU averaged 25k fans per game last season and they have ~7k undergraduates. What do they bring to a conference?
Let’s put 25k in context
They was a great documentary on the NCAA killing the program
They were among the top teams in in country in the early 1980’s Were talking the heyday of that Conference but before the NCAA.Destruction
1979 - 85 they were 40-10 in conference
They’re program was shutdown 1986-88
From 1988-95 merger the won 3 conference games . I believe scholarships were limited
A disgruntled player turned them in because they cut his payment and they were put on probation
They then panicked and decided to continue to pay the other others players for fear those players would turn them in When they were caught again the program was shutdown completely until they played 1AA UConn
If they were still getting 25k a game in those dismal years that’s very impressive.