With the Chargers gone and Mission Valley up for grabs, it seems everybody is suddenly *keenly* interested in San Diego State’s football attendance. Trouble is, that number has always been kind of tough to pin down. The official count is a tickets-distributed figure, and that often doesn’t jibe with the butts in seats. THE HATERZ on the other hand have it on good authority that literally zero people have ever attended an Aztecs football game. We’re here to find the truth, people.
Game
November 18, 2017: SDSU vs. Nevada. The Rashaad Penny Game. Read the recap.
Drawing cards
- It was the annual game where, like, 700 small children do a cheerleading routine on the field at halftime for some reason. These kids and their parents fill up the lower part of Field Level for the first half, which is nice. Then, once the halftime whathaveyou is over, 100 percent of them stream for the exits. Shame on you, cheer parents of Rancho Penasquitos. Shame on you.
- Uhhh … well … cheap tickets, I guess?
Mitigating factors
- I’m not sure if you noticed, but the last two rather important home games didn’t really go so great.
- On a related note, the Aztecs were knocked out of the conference race earlier in the day. Stupid Wyoming.
- SDSU students are traditionally checked out by this point of the season. It might have been different if the Aztecs were still in contention for the Fiesta Bowl. The Aztecs are not still in contention for the Fiesta Bowl.
- Nevada came in 2-8 and doesn’t have a huge fanbase anyway. Plus it’s mid-November, making traversing the treacherous Sierra a fool’s errand. Better to make camp until next spring than risk getting snowed in with no provisions and resorting to cannibalism.
Announced attendance
29,265.
Even for an announced attendance figure, this is on the high end of what I was expecting. But did it reflect reality?
Evidence: Exhibit A
I took these photos during the second quarter. Note: My phone is still utter crap.
Evidence: Exhibit B
These photos were crowd-sourced from our loyal Twitter followers.
Rating the official attendance figure on a scale of one to five fudge elves, with one being accurate and five being fudged to the point of demanding a public records request.
OK, so that was not 29K. As an expert Mission Valley Stadium attender, that crowd had low 20,000s written all over it. It was a bigger butts-in-seats turnout than I was expecting, all things considered. That said, once the temperature dipped and the fog rolled in during the second half, people got the hell out of there quick. I’m guessing there were 10,000 max still in the stands when Penny went for touchdown No. 4. Three fudge elves.
KABEER THIRTY 