SMU Football Coach June Jones: Success in Football Benefits Everyone
April 20, 2010
By Brooks L. Powell
blpowell@smu.edu
Hear Coach Jones address the SMU Student Senate at their Tuesday, April 20 meeting.
SMU Football Coach June Jones told the SMU Student Senate a winning football program is a major benefit to the university as a whole. And he said he has proof.
“I think a lot of times, people forget what a successful football team or athletic department … does for everybody,” Jones said.
To substantiate his claim, Jones offered Senators a number of statistics Tuesday afternoon. SMU Daily Mustang has not been able to independently confirm that the figures are accurate.
According to Jones, an independent media research firm calculated that 540 million people tuned in to watch the Mustangs’ victory at the Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl on Dec. 24, 2009.
Jones said the football team’s impressive performance had an immediate impact on prospective students. From the date of the game through Jan. 9, 2010, Jones said admission applications to SMU surged 35 percent.
Responding to recent reports about the SMU athletics department’s growing budget deficits, Jones said winning, and therefore recruiting more students to attend SMU, will help stem fiscal hemorrhaging.
“[Winning] allows us to reach and make more revenue at the school,” Jones said. “This school has been operating in a big deficit obviously for a number of years, and so we’re on the verge of breaking through that, which is really really exciting.”
Jones said SMU also saw gains on the digital front. Hits on SMU’s homepage since Dec. 24, have increased 35 to 40 percent, Jones said. He boasted that on Dec. 24, the number of hits at SMU.edu numbered 87,000, easily eclipsing the 77,000 Web site hits on the date of the announcement that the Bush Library and Institute would make its home on the Hilltop.
While the players gear up for the fall, Jones said the athletic department is ramping up some new traditions. The two mustangs presented to SMU by philanthropist Madeleine Pickens, wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, will be christened with new names in an upcoming ceremony. Details are forthcoming. In addition, last season, players and students marched with the live mustang mascots in the “Mustang Walk” from Moody Coliseum to Ford Stadium. Jones encouraged all students to join in starting at the first home game Sept. 11, against the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Regarding next season, Jones said he’s particularly optimistic.
“We’re excited about where we’re headed,” Jones said. “We think we’re going to continue right on up the ladder—we envision a conference championship and that’s what we’re playing for.”
“It certainly will be a lot of fun to be an SMU Mustang the next four to five years,” Jones said.
