The CardBoard
Worst attended Stanford football game? - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: Worst attended Stanford football game? (/thread-16421.html)

Pages: 1 2

Worst attended Stanford football game? - 81alum - 09-15-2018

I just got back from biking to the game.  I enjoyed having the game on a pleasant day and early.  However, the fans appear not to agree with me very much.  This was by far the worst attended game I have ever been present to see.

Looking around the upper bowl, no section was as much as a third full, and there were entire sections with half a dozen people in them.

In the lower bowl things were somewhat better, but even in the prime seats it looked like 50% to me.

And then people went to the concourse, making attendance look even smaller.

I have no idea what the official "tickets sold" will be,  but I doubt very much if there were more than 15k people in the stadium today. You could have taken every soul in the upper bowl and seated them in the lower bowl with room to spare.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - JPR36 - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 03:18 PM)81alum Wrote:  I just got back from biking to the game.  I enjoyed having the game on a pleasant day and early.   However, the fans appear not to agree with me very much.  This was by far the worst attended game I have ever been present to see.

Looking around the upper bowl, no section was as much as half full, and there were entire sections with half a dozen people in them.

In the lower bowl things were somewhat better, but even in the prime seats it looked like 50% to me.

And then people went to the concourse, making attendance look even smaller.

I have no idea what the official "tickets sold" will be,  but I doubt very much if there were more than 15k people in the stadium today.  You could have taken every soul in the upper bowl and seated them in the lower bowl with room to spare.

Given that the game was at 11AM against UC Davis, I would say that was (to use a favorite word on this board) very predictable.

lex24 - lex24 - 09-15-2018

11. UC Davis. School not in. I’m surprised there were 15,000. Lowest attended game I ever saw was the first Sat back after 9/11. Can’t remember who they played. I think it rained. Sparse crowd would be a generous statement.

Edit: it wasn’t after 9/11. It was after the ‘89 Loma Prieta quake.

RE: lex24 - JPR36 - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 03:23 PM)lex24 Wrote:  11. UC Davis. School not in. I’m surprised there were 15,000. Lowest attended game I ever saw was the first Sat back after 9/11.  Can’t remember who they played. I think it rained. Sparse crowd would be a generous statement.

I remember the game after the earthquake in (I think 1989). I doubt if there were 10,000 people in the stands.

RE: lex24 - 81alum - 09-15-2018

Official attendance: 31,772.

A complete fiction.

RE: lex24 - 82lsju - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 03:23 PM)lex24 Wrote:  11. UC Davis. School not in. I’m surprised there were 15,000. Lowest attended game I ever saw was the first Sat back after 9/11.  Can’t remember who they played. I think it rained. Sparse crowd would be a generous statement.

Edit:  it wasn’t after 9/11. It was after the ‘89 Loma  Prieta quake.

it was vs Utah and I was there (also attended today) and only recall overcast but maybe some light rain/drizzle.

RE: lex24 - Mick - 09-15-2018

Just out of curiosity...if a (nameless) University puts thousands of football tickets on a popular ticket site and buys all of those tickets back at less than face value, do those purchased tickets count as attendance?

Asking for a friend...

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - Phogge - 09-15-2018

Lovely day. About as much excitement as reading on a beach. Stadium coffee awful. Costello was overthrowing receivers in pregame. Carried over to first Q. No urgency from sleepy “crowd.” No urgency from offense. Penalty fest.

Things I liked:A. Fox (#6) with good push in the last two series. Justus Woods getting a carry. Speights running hard. Adebo. Toohill (left in fourth Q, injured?). Richardson and others getting on field, probably for the only time.

Best thing... driving home after total boredom.

lex24 - lex24 - 09-15-2018

I sure hope Toohill wasn’t hurt. He’s been terrific so far this year.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - Ronnietrader - 09-15-2018

I was at the game right after the earthquake against Utah.  To make things worse, it was raining hard early.  If I recall, announced attendance was 12K which was supposedly the smallest since they built the stadium.

RE: lex24 - 82lsju - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 04:42 PM)Phogge Wrote:  Best thing... driving home after total boredom.

not the pre-game donuts???????
(09-15-2018, 04:38 PM)Mick Wrote:  Just out of curiosity...if a (nameless) University puts thousands of football tickets on a popular ticket site and buys all of those tickets back at less than face value, do those purchased tickets count as attendance?

Asking for a friend...

if you gift your tickets back to the University for the tax deduction (probably a good idea this week if you could not attend given the poor resale market) do they still count as sold tickets?

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - 81alum - 09-15-2018

Has anyone attended a home game, other than after a natural or man-made disaster, that had worse attendance than today? 

SDSU and USC had announced attendance of 41k and 43k--so we are far from selling out even against better opponents in better timeslots.   And we sold 10k fewer tickets for today than for our prior games. 

But there must have been a whole lot of season ticket holders who did not show up today, since 30k would have seemed raucous by comparison.

I will second the advantage of not having any lines for anything.  At times I got out of my seat and walked up and down the concourse, where I could always find an unobstructed view of each play, situating myself at the line of scrimmage each time.  Only occasionally would I have to adjust a little to accommodate another standing play-watcher.  

Band notes.  What did you all think of the Band's scarecrow riff on UC Davis?  That scarecrow looked pretty creepy. They got the national anthem down MUCH better than the first game.  The trumpet solo sounded decent. Then again, I'm not sure who is really in this incarnation of the band given that students are still not back.  (Half the home games without the students, BOO!)

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - winflop - 09-15-2018

Attendance is based on number of tickets sold by the University. Resales don't get counted again or do tickets donated back to school since they are already bought. It's sometimes called "paid attendance"

Actual attendance didn't surprise me at all and I'm not gonna grouse about it. It is what it is.

The only real shame is that we played half our home schedule before students are back on campus. That is really shameful - Mr. Muir...

In fact, I said that to him in person today. He was his usual noncommittal self and pointed out that a number of schools on the quarter system have this problem. I said most of those schools don't schedule their first 3 games at home and that we need to go on the road at least once before the students are on campus.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - Snorlax94 - 09-15-2018

I dunno, how much can be done about 3 home games before students get back? Even in the 90s, when there only 11 games, it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be 2 home games in September. At least one of the slots has an away game: next weekend at Oregon, school still will not have started.

I wonder how much has been tried to fill seats for these early games with nearby recent alums? I know they get heavy discounts for season tickets, but they need to try something new to fill seats for these games. I’ve seen they’ve tried free tickets for kids (kids get in free with paying adults) and for educators (free tickets for local teachers, recognition for school groups), but those don’t seem to work. The stubhub seats tank so much in vaue it makes me wonder if some people are dumping their free tix. Anyway, the free ticket promos could explain the wide disparities between “sold tickets” and seats visibly occupied.

Does anyone closer to the Red Zone know — are they able to fill the student red zone tickets for these early games? Or are even the free students seats unfilled? How much of an impact does the start of school have — do students buy additional seats outside of the free student red zone?

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - 81alum - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 07:58 PM)Snorlax94 Wrote:  I dunno, how much can be done about 3 home games before students get back? Even in the 90s, when there only 11 games, it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be 2 home games in September. At least one of the slots has an away game: next weekend at Oregon, school still will not have started.
Next weekend is orientation and if we had a home game, the red zone would be filled.

There were quite a few grad students and the like in the red zone today--I'd guess it was at least a third filled.  Student attendance was not the worst of our problems, today.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - chrisk - 09-15-2018

The most fun at the Utah game after the earthquake were the aftershocks rocking the old stadium.

The Red Zone has plenty of sections allocated to accommodate high demand games without the students having to buy tickets outside the section.
If Stanford and USC continue to play Notre Dame at the end of the season, the only way to solve the problem of playing USC early every year and the problem of too many early September home games in even years is for the conference to allow more non-conference games to be schedules in October and November and for the conference season to start the 2nd week of the season instead of the 4th week for most teams.

Stanford and USC have to play each other in the second week because all other teams are playing non-conference games in the second week.  If the conference schedules more teams for the 2nd week, Stanford and USC would have more options for conference opponents that week.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - French Rage - 09-15-2018

(09-15-2018, 04:42 PM)Phogge Wrote:  Lovely day. About as much excitement as reading on a beach. Stadium coffee awful. Costello was overthrowing receivers in pregame. Carried over to first Q. No urgency from sleepy “crowd.” No urgency from offense. Penalty fest.

Things I liked:A. Fox (#6) with good push in the last two series. Justus Woods getting a carry. Speights running hard. Adebo. Toohill (left in fourth Q, injured?). Richardson and others getting on field, probably for the only time.

Best thing... driving home after total boredom.

Yeah they took him into the tunnel right after the deflection.  Had ice on his left arm when we came back out 10 or so minutes later.  Wonder if batting the pass broke or bruised something?

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - Phogge - 09-15-2018

There were about 22 people left in the Stadium at the end of the Wazzu game in 2006. Think that was the date. That was the game when the Cougs made about 20 sacks including 5 or 6 by one of the DE’s

In the not so wonderful 1960 season in the ninth game Dick Norman ran for a TD in the closing seconds. But Dean Hinshaw was called for clipping and Oregon State won in a very heavy day long downpour. There couldn’t have been 6,000 people in the old stadium at any time that day. Stanford lost the BG the following week to turn in a perfect season, 0-10.

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - BostonCard - 09-16-2018

(09-15-2018, 11:31 PM)Phogge Wrote:  There were about 22 people left in the Stadium at the end of the Wazzu game in 2006. Think that was the date. That was the game when the Cougs made about 20 sacks including 5 or 6 by one of the DE’s

Was that the game played in torrential rain?  I vaguely remember one game during the Dark Ages that was played in a downpour, and the number of fans in the stands could have been counted on two hands. 

BC

RE: Worst attended Stanford football game? - Phogge - 09-16-2018

(09-16-2018, 01:13 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  
(09-15-2018, 11:31 PM)Phogge Wrote:  There were about 22 people left in the Stadium at the end of the Wazzu game in 2006. Think that was the date. That was the game when the Cougs made about 20 sacks including 5 or 6 by one of the DE’s

Was that the game played in torrential rain?  I vaguely remember one game during the Dark Ages that was played in a downpour, and the number of fans in the stands could have been counted on two hands. 

BC

I don’t remember the weather but do remember the sacks. There were two other horrible offensive performances and both came against Arizona. The Desert Swarm overwhelmed Walsh II in ‘92 and there was the Oasisi pick 6 game during Buddy/Walt years.