Where are the fans? WSU football attendance is lowest in Pac-10

Associated Press

PULLMAN – What’s wrong with the Cougars?

No. 16 Washington State, leading the Pacific-10 Conference in offense and scoring and having one of its best-ever seasons, can’t seem to fill Martin Stadium.

“It’s a tough draw to get people to drive 2 1/2, 3 1/2, even five hours to come to a game,” WSU Marketing Director J.D. Griffith said Wednesday. Some 27 percent of season ticket holders are from the Seattle area “and that’s a major commitment,” he said.

WSU, a land grant college is the farthest from a metropolitan area of all Pac-10 schools. It’s an hour-and-a-half drive to Spokane, and about five hours to Seattle.

Cougars coach Mike Price has concluded several of his weekly press conferences this season with pleas for fans to fill Martin Stadium, one of the smallest in the Pac-10 with a capacity of 35,283.

The Cougars have attracted an average of 27,278 fans this season, the lowest home attendance in the league and well below the conference home average of 47,137.

Cross-state rival Washington leads the conference, averaging 72,070 fans for each home game in 72,500-seat Husky Stadium.

Former Athletic Director Rick Dickson broached a plan to play at least one big name opponent a year “at home” in Seattle in non-Apple Cup years to placate Cougars’ boosters and increase the team’s presence in Western Washington.

Athletic Director Jim Sterk was traveling Wednesday and unavailable for comment on whether the idea is still alive.

The Oregon State game on Oct. 6 was the first sellout since the Stanford game Nov. 15, 1997, the year the Cougars went to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1931.

Against Oregon last weekend, in a game that featured two of the top quarterbacks in the conference and could have sent WSU to 8-0 for the first time since 1930, there were more than 1,000 empty seats.

The 34,150 fans on hand were “loud, fired up and they stayed until the last play,” Price said. “You couldn’t ask more from people.”

WSU ticket director Jon Nelson said the conference numbers are deceiving, because other teams with larger stadiums have a smaller percentage of seats filled.

Oregon State is listed as 8th in the conference, with an average of 36,427 fans. Reser Stadium in Corvallis has a capacity of only 35,232 rabid Beavers, but the school oversells the stadium and crams standing-room-only fans into nooks and crannies.

UCLA, the Cougars’ opponent Saturday, plays in the 91,136-seat Rose Bowl and is second in the conference, with an average 69,822 a game.

“Obviously, we’d love to have 85,000 seats,” Nelson said. “But from numbers in years past, we’re definitely up.”

A Thursday night game against Division I-AA Montana State, which drew only 14,325 fans, hurt the Cougars’ average, Nelson said.

As of Wednesday, there were still about 1,400 reserved seats and a few student section seats available for the game against No. 9 UCLA on Saturday.

“We’ve had plenty of discussions,” Griffith said. “We’ve tried, and will continue to try, all kinds of options to get people down here.”