[82lsju]

 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.

[82lsju]

 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.