USC’s sparse crowd for its opener against San Jose State became a talking point almost as soon as the game ended, and the empty seats pointed to more than just one hot Saturday in L.A. The bigger issue is whether college football keeps asking fans to show up for matchups that are too often hard to sell.
Stewart Mandel joked on X, “Didn’t realize USC’s spring game was today,” before adding: “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.” That is the core of the complaint. USC fans may have blamed the heat, but the game itself did little to create urgency, and three straight mediocre years under Lincoln Riley have not helped the mood.
Why the crowd was so thin
This was not just about one unattractive opener. USC and Stanford both operate in pro sports-heavy markets where college teams are, at best, the fourth- or fifth-biggest sports priority. When the opponent is not compelling, and when the team has not given fans enough recent reasons to believe, attendance can sag quickly.
There is also a wider scheduling issue underneath it all. Over the past year or so, marquee programs canceled upcoming home-and-homes including Georgia-Florida State, Georgia-Louisville, Alabama-West Virginia, South Carolina-Miami and Indiana-Notre Dame. Those decisions leave fewer premium nonconference games on the calendar, and the replacements are often hard for fans to get excited about.
A Week 0 warning for schools
Marty made the broader point clearly: “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.”
That is where the USC conversation becomes relevant beyond one stadium. Week 0 and the opening weeks can reveal how much demand really exists when the opponent is limited and the kickoff time is shaped by TV rather than the fans in the stands. Saturday’s announced crowd of 23,222 for Stanford against Hawaii showed the same problem in another form.
College football still sells itself best when the game feels like an event. When the matchup is flat, the schedule has been stripped of bigger nonconference showpieces, and the team has not built enough excitement, empty seats become part of the story. USC’s opener was a reminder that the sport’s attendance problem is not always about weather. Sometimes, it is about the product.
