[needle]

 This board is very under representative of the Stanford community at large, which in many ways, is the anti-SEC: "it just doesn't mean that much".

I'm unmoved by most of the arguments that suggest competing as other universities do in college sports is somehow an affront to Stanford's core mission. But this argument here is by far the strongest that Stanford should "pack up its ball(s) and go home."

It is not enough for Andrew Luck and whomever the next Stanford football coach is to win 7+ games; they must also do so while putting butts in the seats, or the whole endeavor will be proven as truly unbefitting of Stanford.

I think this will be a high bar based on

1.  the demographics I see at football games, it skews older and as some age out there do not appear to be replacements.

2.  If we don't have wider appeal to non-alums, relying on alums to fill the stadium the will be challenging.  In my class ('82) there are just under 400 alums who live within 50 miles of campus (as the crow flies) which is ~25% of the living members of the class.  For the class of 2020 it is ~265 people, ~15% of the class.  The alumni database shows ~17,000 living undergrad alums living within 50 miles of campus.  If they all showed up at a game with one guest we'd still need to sell ~17,000 additional tickets for a sell out.

And don't forget the loss of marquee opponents UCLA and USC! 

It's truly going to be a challenge. While the specific reasons for attendance struggles may be unique, it's tough for many small, private universities to attract fans, even for winning football:

 Despite winning ten games in a season for just the sixth time in program history, Memphis Tigers football attendance dropped to its lowest point in twelve years.  

Opponents matter, perhaps more than AD-types realize:

 So what led to Tiger football attendance tanking this year? Right off the bat, part of it can be attributed to the renovations at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium which have led to the stadium being nicknamed (perhaps affectionately or perhaps derisively) the “Liberty Hole.”

But surely a missing press box and a few thousand seats removed from a 59,000-seat venue wouldn’t cause such a massive drop in attendance, would it?

Another possible explanation is the schedule. For the second time in three years, the Tigers did not play host to a power conference team at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Additionally, the American Athletic Conference does not have as many teams that draw interest as they used to with Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston all now struggling for bowl-eligibility in the Big XII. To fill the void, the AAC added teams like Charlotte, UAB, and FAU.

https://bluffcitymedia.co/2024s-memphis-...ince-2012/

EDIT: The University of Memphis is a lot bigger than I realized, with an enrolllment topping 20k. I was surprised to learn that it's also a public university, so there really aren't many parallels with Stanford, other than perhaps a perceived degradation in the quality of opponents.

[needle]

 This board is very under representative of the Stanford community at large, which in many ways, is the anti-SEC: "it just doesn't mean that much".

I'm unmoved by most of the arguments that suggest competing as other universities do in college sports is somehow an affront to Stanford's core mission. But this argument here is by far the strongest that Stanford should "pack up its ball(s) and go home."

It is not enough for Andrew Luck and whomever the next Stanford football coach is to win 7+ games; they must also do so while putting butts in the seats, or the whole endeavor will be proven as truly unbefitting of Stanford.

I think this will be a high bar based on

1.  the demographics I see at football games, it skews older and as some age out there do not appear to be replacements.

2.  If we don't have wider appeal to non-alums, relying on alums to fill the stadium the will be challenging.  In my class ('82) there are just under 400 alums who live within 50 miles of campus (as the crow flies) which is ~25% of the living members of the class.  For the class of 2020 it is ~265 people, ~15% of the class.  The alumni database shows ~17,000 living undergrad alums living within 50 miles of campus.  If they all showed up at a game with one guest we'd still need to sell ~17,000 additional tickets for a sell out.

And don't forget the loss of marquee opponents UCLA and USC! 

It's truly going to be a challenge. While the specific reasons for attendance struggles may be unique, it's tough for many small, private universities to attract fans, even for winning football:

 Despite winning ten games in a season for just the sixth time in program history, Memphis Tigers football attendance dropped to its lowest point in twelve years.  

Opponents matter, perhaps more than AD-types realize:

 So what led to Tiger football attendance tanking this year? Right off the bat, part of it can be attributed to the renovations at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium which have led to the stadium being nicknamed (perhaps affectionately or perhaps derisively) the “Liberty Hole.”

But surely a missing press box and a few thousand seats removed from a 59,000-seat venue wouldn’t cause such a massive drop in attendance, would it?

Another possible explanation is the schedule. For the second time in three years, the Tigers did not play host to a power conference team at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Additionally, the American Athletic Conference does not have as many teams that draw interest as they used to with Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston all now struggling for bowl-eligibility in the Big XII. To fill the void, the AAC added teams like Charlotte, UAB, and FAU.

https://bluffcitymedia.co/2024s-memphis-...ince-2012/

EDIT: The University of Memphis is a lot bigger than I realized, with an enrolllment topping 20k. I was surprised to learn that it's also a public university, so there really aren't many parallels with Stanford, other than perhaps a perceived degradation in the quality of opponents.