But in fairness I should also point out our football team was not particularly good, any time I was paying attention. As I said before, there is a large amount of “fair-weather fan-dom”. When the teams are particularlly good, for whatever reason. probably lots of people will all of a sudden come out of the woodwork. And then, for that time, it will be massively popular. That actually happened, at my alma mater, very recently with basketball. For an unprecendented few years they were actually really good. And apparently drew big crowds. Versus when I attended we weren’t sure where the games were even played.
re #85:
“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.”
After I wrote that, I vaguely remembered a fraternity-sorority social scene
at my school actually took place during the games! So some of these people were there. But they were not paying attention to the game.