[Farm93]

Most of the crowd is not current students. If you assume that a third of the crowd is there for the visiting team, that still leaves a Stanford crowd that is 1.75 times the entire student population. I doubt even half of the student population at any level goes to the games regularly. That means most of the crowd is alumni, family, friends or unaffiliated.

With a current student population, the total number of undergraduate alumni are going to be less than 70,000. Even if the alumni that come bring the whole family, 10% of all undergraduate alumni would have to be at each game to fill out the rest of the crowd. Seems unlikely given the dispersal of alumni.

I'm guessing that  a big part of the ticket sales involves corporate accounts at silicon valley companies. Those are probably arranged by executives who are alumni. Are those more likely to be undergrad or grad alumni?

Stanford outperforms what would be predicted based on the size of the undergrad and/or grad alumni base because Stanford has quite a number of "friends".  I know many of the people that sit around me at Stanford events live in the area and just like attending Stanford games.

Stanford does not get the easy citizen of "fill in the blank" therefore fan of "fill in the blank" University category of fans, but outside of that easy affiliation group Stanford does a very good job at finding/building/keeping friends for many years.  And that's just the fans in the stands.  Goes without saying that few universities are as good at getting those friends to give money to the athletic department.

All of that was the point really.  Stanford is #52 in attendance, but given the size Stanford's undergraduate population (and undergrad alumni base) ~45,000 fans in the stands is really a decent showing.  That decent showing is driven by getting a decent number of grad students into the mix and a whole lot of local residents to care despite lacking any obvious affiliation to the school.

[Farm93]

Most of the crowd is not current students. If you assume that a third of the crowd is there for the visiting team, that still leaves a Stanford crowd that is 1.75 times the entire student population. I doubt even half of the student population at any level goes to the games regularly. That means most of the crowd is alumni, family, friends or unaffiliated.

With a current student population, the total number of undergraduate alumni are going to be less than 70,000. Even if the alumni that come bring the whole family, 10% of all undergraduate alumni would have to be at each game to fill out the rest of the crowd. Seems unlikely given the dispersal of alumni.

I'm guessing that  a big part of the ticket sales involves corporate accounts at silicon valley companies. Those are probably arranged by executives who are alumni. Are those more likely to be undergrad or grad alumni?

Stanford outperforms what would be predicted based on the size of the undergrad and/or grad alumni base because Stanford has quite a number of "friends".  I know many of the people that sit around me at Stanford events live in the area and just like attending Stanford games.

Stanford does not get the easy citizen of "fill in the blank" therefore fan of "fill in the blank" University category of fans, but outside of that easy affiliation group Stanford does a very good job at finding/building/keeping friends for many years.  And that's just the fans in the stands.  Goes without saying that few universities are as good at getting those friends to give money to the athletic department.

All of that was the point really.  Stanford is #52 in attendance, but given the size Stanford's undergraduate population (and undergrad alumni base) ~45,000 fans in the stands is really a decent showing.  That decent showing is driven by getting a decent number of grad students into the mix and a whole lot of local residents to care despite lacking any obvious affiliation to the school.