Posts: 439
Threads: 35
Joined: Dec 1969
I agree that we\'re never going to fill the stadium with Stanford alums, but 30,000 would be a pathetic attendance figure for this game. Stanford is off to its best start in 40 years, and it\'s coming off an 8-4 season, the school\'s best in almost a decade. This game, against a top-20 team, is probably the second-best match-up on the home schedule this year.
Fans are always offering pet theories on why Stanford\'s attendance has fallen off so much over the decades. The beer ban seems like one popular scapegoat. I wonder if changing demographics on the Peninsula, coincident with the rise of Silicon Valley, are a major factor. In the golden era of Stanford football attendance, the 70s and earlier, wasn\'t the Peninsula\'s population significantly less transient? I wasn\'t around then, but the sense I have is that there were fewer transplants from other parts of the country, and also fewer immigrants living near Stanford at that time. Most Peninsula residents were not Stanford alums, of course, but they grew up in the community, and Stanford football was a major part of the sports landscape.
Isn\'t the Peninsula considerably different today, with far fewer people who have longstanding roots in the community? It\'d be interesting to see data on this, but I suspect it\'s a large part of the problem. Unfortunately, the demographic trend will continue to get worse in coming years.