As much as I’d like to put together a long, glowing review of Larry Fedora’s record-breaking head coaching debut, and start working on the Auburn edition of Know Thy Enemy, I am currently forced to tend to other matters of a higher priority.

See you on the other side…at least once the power’s back on.

I’ve seen some grumbling in the past few days from people upset about the lack of a major boost in season ticket sales this season. A lot of it, to me anyway, is simply a continuation of the perpetual “blame those who aren’t fans” attitude that has infested the USM-verse for eons. Well, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and ask the question that—obvious as it may be—few want to ask:

Just what has Southern Miss done to expect otherwise?

Have our new, cutting-edge efforts to harvest first-time season-ticket buyers fallen on deaf ears? Oh, wait…there haven’t been any such efforts. Are people in South Mississippi and surrounding areas just not interested in an explosive team with a chip on its shoulder that’ll stand toe-to-toe with the nation’s best? Perhaps we could find out if we actually had a team like that.

While I’m as excited about the Fedora era as the next person, and he seems to be laying a great foundation, the fact of the matter is, he hasn’t coached a game yet. To expect one move (which I feel compelled to explore more in-depth in a future update), the results of which are probably a couple of years from materializing, to immediately increase season ticket commitments by two-fold or more is just unrealistic. “Larry Fedora facts” aside, he’s a football coach, not a miracle worker.

"Onward, To The Top!"

This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a buddy of mine after the Cal game in 2004. My friend, who lives on the East Coast, mentioned how horrible it was that despite USM hosting the #4 team in the country, attendance was still under 28,000.

I responded by telling him that I quit blaming the customer a long time ago. Earlier that same season, we hosted a game as a Top 25 team. Over 30,000 showed up. That Top 25 team then promptly laid one of the biggest eggs in recent memory in front of those 30,000+, looking completely clueless en route to a 52-24 pasting by a Cincinnati team that had just a couple of weeks earlier provided relief to the longest active losing streak in what was then I-A. By the time that Cal game came around, we’d lost two more conference games to put us out of the championship running, had once again barely sneaked by the powerhouse that is UAB, and pretty much already had the New Orleans Bowl trip booked. Why did people stay away? Because 1) truth be known, Texas had more riding on the game than Southern Miss did, and 2) those people knew that recent history dictated that versus a good team, Southern Miss will either get blown off the field or, at best, keep it close only to painfully lose at the end on something goofy like a blocked PAT returned for a defensive conversion (which, of course, is precisely what happened). What, exactly, does one miss out on by watching such a thing transpire from the comfort of their own living room as opposed to buying a ticket and making the trip to campus? Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt anyone who chose not to attend that night is kicking themselves today for not going.

The cold, hard reality here is that there’s a certain amount of..well, reality that has to be dealt with. Part of that reality is that we haven’t fielded a particularly good or otherwise compelling football team in a while, and you simply can’t erase years of frustration and apathy overnight. Some will say, “Well, golly, are you saying we can’t afford to lose at all?” No, but I am saying that when you’re within an easy day’s drive of three traditional national powers and share a state two other “power conference” also-rans, the bar is set high and there’s just not much of a market for what our program has been turning out lately. When presented with any opportunity–whether it be against a Top 25 team or a Sun Belt nobody–to make a statement about who Southern Miss is and what it’s about, that statement has to be made, and it has to be positive.

Sure, I’d love to see more people fired up about Southern Miss football to the point that they’ll commit to a full season’s worth of tickets sight unseen, but there’s a certain level of acceptance that has to come with where we’re at right now. Consider for a moment that ticket sales are a whisker away from a record as I type this–despite not an additional touchdown being scored, an additional game being won, an additional 3^rd-down stop being made, or any specific effort being made to target fresh buyers. That’s not bad. Now just imagine what might happen once we have something more tangible to sell than hope.