[Brickcity]

But again, if Stanford Stadium is close to full and the majority of fans are rooting for Stanford in their own "polite" way, I suspect that dynamic is enough to satisfy most head coaches.

I would argue that has probably never happened. Especially when Stanford is good, the visiting team always is 50+% of the stadium. There are lots of reasons for this, as has been pointed out on this board. One very important one is that we are a much smaller school than almost all of our conference opponents. They have more students and more alumni. SC is also not big, but as you know from attending the games, they are always well represented. I do think that most head coaches want a full stadium, and if the crowd is about 50-50, that is fine with them.

As to the point you made about other factors making it much less likely that we'll draw 50,000 fans even with a top 10 team, we'll just have to wait and see.

Indeed. I want to do the experiment as soon as possible!

Slightly off topic but a related question: are they still blasting "music" between plays over the P.A. system? When I was at Big Game a couple of years ago I was appalled to encounter this phenomenon for the first time. Even if they had been playing music I liked, it would have bothered me. The fact they were playing complete garbage made it unbearable. I haven't been back to the stadium since then and don't plan to if they still do so.

[Brickcity]

But again, if Stanford Stadium is close to full and the majority of fans are rooting for Stanford in their own "polite" way, I suspect that dynamic is enough to satisfy most head coaches.

I would argue that has probably never happened. Especially when Stanford is good, the visiting team always is 50+% of the stadium. There are lots of reasons for this, as has been pointed out on this board. One very important one is that we are a much smaller school than almost all of our conference opponents. They have more students and more alumni. SC is also not big, but as you know from attending the games, they are always well represented. I do think that most head coaches want a full stadium, and if the crowd is about 50-50, that is fine with them.

As to the point you made about other factors making it much less likely that we'll draw 50,000 fans even with a top 10 team, we'll just have to wait and see.

Indeed. I want to do the experiment as soon as possible!

Slightly off topic but a related question: are they still blasting "music" between plays over the P.A. system? When I was at Big Game a couple of years ago I was appalled to encounter this phenomenon for the first time. Even if they had been playing music I liked, it would have bothered me. The fact they were playing complete garbage made it unbearable. I haven't been back to the stadium since then and don't plan to if they still do so.