[81alum]

The Bay Area is a lousy college football market.  I've heard most of these arguments with regard to San Jose State football too, and I bet you can find parallel threads over at Cal.  And they are all true.

Too many pro teams, other college teams, and other cultural events.  Plus the demographics of the local population is not supportive--we live in a highly diverse area where many cultural groups are not very interested in a sport with no international appeal, or perhaps in sports in general.    

To this I would add that Stanford is actually a very small university, when it comes to its undergraduate base.  San Jose State has 30k students and can't get more than a handful of them to turn out for its football games; imagine how much harder it is for Stanford with 6500 students.  Stanford's undergraduate student body is actually not that much bigger than some of the larger liberal arts colleges--the size of the graduate programs and of the campus and of the reputation can conceal this basic fact.  And that in turn--as has been pointed out--creates a much smaller alumni base than a large state university.  Then factor in the tendency for most alums to scatter across the world....it is a minor miracle when we DO have a good turnout.  Shrinking the stadium was the right thing to do.

As for the "just win baby" philosophy of attendance--every less-than-successful program lies to itself and says that attendance and finances will turn around just as soon as it starts winning.  They are not entirely wrong.  But the measure of a successful program ought to be one that retains a vibrant fan base in an average year--not just during the best of years.   Most teams, after all, are average.  And I guess that at this point we might all be relieved with a 6-6 season.

[81alum]

The Bay Area is a lousy college football market.  I've heard most of these arguments with regard to San Jose State football too, and I bet you can find parallel threads over at Cal.  And they are all true.

Too many pro teams, other college teams, and other cultural events.  Plus the demographics of the local population is not supportive--we live in a highly diverse area where many cultural groups are not very interested in a sport with no international appeal, or perhaps in sports in general.    

To this I would add that Stanford is actually a very small university, when it comes to its undergraduate base.  San Jose State has 30k students and can't get more than a handful of them to turn out for its football games; imagine how much harder it is for Stanford with 6500 students.  Stanford's undergraduate student body is actually not that much bigger than some of the larger liberal arts colleges--the size of the graduate programs and of the campus and of the reputation can conceal this basic fact.  And that in turn--as has been pointed out--creates a much smaller alumni base than a large state university.  Then factor in the tendency for most alums to scatter across the world....it is a minor miracle when we DO have a good turnout.  Shrinking the stadium was the right thing to do.

As for the "just win baby" philosophy of attendance--every less-than-successful program lies to itself and says that attendance and finances will turn around just as soon as it starts winning.  They are not entirely wrong.  But the measure of a successful program ought to be one that retains a vibrant fan base in an average year--not just during the best of years.   Most teams, after all, are average.  And I guess that at this point we might all be relieved with a 6-6 season.