Re #80, at least at Cornell. when I attended, attendance figures did not perfectly track which sport would be missed most. The hockey rink had a fraction of the seating capacity of the football stadium. Hockey probably had lower attendance figures than football , but merely for that reason. Hockey clearly had 9 billion percent more interest among the student body, however.
Football was played during the nice days in the Fall, when it was pleasant to just sit outside for a few hours. The football team, truthfully, did not have a huge following, Regardless of whether more people were sitting in the huge but sparsely filled football stands on a nice Fall day than in the small but absolutely packed hockey rink in winter, There is nobody who attended who would have any question about which was the preferred sport on campus. It was hockey.
In recent years, Cornell has been invited to play a Thanksgiving match at Madison Square Garden, giving current students and alums of both schools a chance to attend. The sport they select to attract those alums is not football. It is hockey. And they have sold out the Garden every time, IIRC.
Frankly I think lacrosse was more popular on campus than football too, when I attended. And again attendance figures would likely be misleading. It was played in the Spring semester IIRC. A decent chunk of the Spring term it can be quite cold up there, even snowing, not pleasant to be sitting in the stands. By the time it gets nice out, people are heading towards finals. So the games quite likely got less attendance than they should have, due to weather. Yet students followed the team quite closely in the papers and cared about it, because it was very good, at the time.
So to reiterate and reinforce, football attendance figures can overstate the actual relative interest levels on campus in the football team, due to factors such as : much larger stadium capacity vs. other sports, and played during nicer weather. I’ll add another factor at some campuses, though not mine: an extensive pre-game social “scene”, that has nothing to do with football per se.