The team drew relatively well during the first two months of the season. While the crowds were not nearly as large as those the Showboats or Southmen had drawn, they were still comparable to those for the established CFL franchises. However, the Mad Dogs had their legs cut out from under them by quirks in the CFL schedule. The CFL traditionally plays on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays — the same days as high school and college football games in the United States - largely to avoid competing on television (both in its native country and the U.S.) with the National Football League. Smith knew that the Mad Dogs could not hope to draw respectable crowds if they had to go head-to-head with high school games on Fridays and Tennessee Volunteers and Ole Miss Rebels football on Saturdays. The Birmingham Barracudas faced the same problem. With this in mind, Smith and Barracudas owner Art Williams persuaded the CFL to let their teams play late-season home games on Sundays. They apparently believed that attempting to compete with NFL broadcasts in markets that did not support any one NFL team in particular was the more sensible risk to take. It did not work; several late season games in Memphis drew crowds of fewer than 10,000, dropping the team's average attendance to around 14,550 by the end of the season. As early as September, Smith was blaming community indifference and outright hostility from the media for the team's steep decline at the gate.