Swaths Of Empty Seats

There’s no way to hide or deny it anymore.

No one is going to Arizona State football games this season.

Coming off the 10-3 Pac-10 co-championship in 2007, every 2008 Sun Devil home game drew over 59,000 fans. This is despite the fact that ASU dropped to 5-7 and suffered painful losses at Sun Devil Stadium to UNLV, Georgia and Oregon.

In 2009, the Sun Devils attracted crowds of 42,588 and 43,780 for back-to-back home games with Idaho State and Louisiana-Monroe to open the season.

Last Saturday, the official attendance for the nationally-televised (kind of) game with Oregon State was 45,373,

By all accounts, and by how it looked in person and on TV, the actual size of that crowd was much, much less.

The rough math tells you that average attendance for ASU football games at home so far between last season and this season is nearly 15,000 less…nearly a 25% drop in bodies through the door at Sun Devil Stadium.

I can understand some sort of decline based on team performance. As mentioned earlier, after drawing 67,000 in the 54-20 drubbing to Oregon last year, attendance for the succeeding two home games went down by about 8,000.

15,000 is staggering, though.

Today, I had a very spirited e-mail exchange with a constant and loyal reader of Pitchfork Nation and we exchanged ideas on why attendance is down.

Is it because the team is worse? Are you tired of inconsistent football? Is Sun Devil Stadium more difficult for you to get to now? Are tickets not an option for you in this economy?

I want you to tell me.

If you live in Tempe, are an avid Sun Devils fan who consistently attended games over the past few years/decades and are now not going, I want to know why.

E-mail your stories to me at pitchforknation@gmail.com and, together, we’ll try to figure out why Sun Devil Stadium crowds have dropped by one-quarter in just one year.

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