The sparse attendance at USC’s opener against San Jose State last weekend became quite a topic of conversation on social media, and I regret that one of my own posts on X may have started it.
I happened to turn on NBC right at kickoff, and one of the first things I saw was the nearly empty lower sections behind the end zone. I admittedly didn’t put much thought into my “Didn’t realize USC’s spring game was today” joke when I posted the screenshot on X. It did not occur to me the entirety of college football — even Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire — would take endless shots at Trojans fans for not caring enough about sports.
As I said after the fact, I personally had no problem with thousands of Trojans fans opting to stay home. Why? Because this was the wretched game USC added to its schedule late last year when Lincoln Riley begged out of the Trojans’ semiannual Thanksgiving weekend date with rival Notre Dame. (Which of those schools deserves the blame was a whole other war for another day.) If only some USC fans had actually come out and said they were staging some sort of protest, they might have garnered some support from afar.
Alas, they all said it was because of the extreme heat, which only invited fans in Texas, Oklahoma and other scorching locales to call the folks in L.A. soft. But this reader sent me a mailbag question that made me wonder whether I’m onto something.
Do you think the “empty seats” stories from Week 0 should be a wake-up call to schools scheduling unappealing matchups? Especially with TV dictating unappealing kickoff times? With the costs of attending games soaring, are fans ready to put their foot down and refuse these unappealing games? Surely one cupcake is enough each season. — Marty
As a fellow Californian who lives only about 40 miles south of you, Marty, we have to acknowledge that schools like USC and Stanford (which played Hawaii on Saturday in front of an announced crowd of 23,222) are not representative of larger college football. Both are in pro sports-heavy markets where college teams are, at best, the fourth- or fifth-biggest sports priority. Heck, the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries, which sell out every home game, would probably draw a bigger crowd than Stanford if Chase Center had more than 18,000 seats.
Also, as much as USC fans blamed the heat, the program is not generating a lot of excitement right now. Maybe that will change over the course of the season, but three straight mediocre years under Riley have sapped local interest in the Trojans.
Still, I must confess, I had mixed feelings reading some of the replies Saturday from fans of Alabama or Oklahoma, bragging that their stadiums sell out every game no matter the opponent. While I would never tell a fan how he or she should spend their money, and I realize you only get seven chances a year to see your team at home — you guys do realize this is why schools get away with dumbing down their schedules?
Over the past year or so, we’ve been subjected to non-stop headlines about marquee programs canceling upcoming home-and-homes, especially once the SEC moved to nine conference games: Georgia-Florida State and Georgia-Louisville, Alabama-West Virginia, South Carolina-Miami, Indiana-Notre Dame and more — but of course they’re keeping the G6 and FCS games. And, no, they will not be cutting their season ticket prices or giving away free parking.
Unless sizeable numbers of fans stop showing up to those bodybag games — not at USC levels, but enough empty seats to show up on television — this trend won’t stop.
Ironically, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti would tell you this trend is exactly why we need a 24-team Playoff. He and the conference believe that once an early-season loss is less risky, schools will sign up to play a full-fledged Big Ten-SEC Challenge in September.
To which I would say: The best way to ensure people stop showing up to the games is to turn them into glorified exhibitions, as USC just found out.