92,000? Exactly? Again?
USC’s announced attendance for the Nebraska game was 92,000. That follows an announced 92,000 for the previous home game (UCLA, 2005), the first time USC’s had identical attendance figures in back-to-back games since 1941.
If you believe these figures, it means USC drew more for Washington State (92,021) and Stanford (92,212) last season than Nebraska and UCLA.
But if you are a student of history, you know USC’s figures are not the most reliable. Amazingly, Notre Dame used to give more accurate crowd counts for USC-Notre Dame games at the Coliseum than USC.
How? Because Notre Dame's media guide attendance figures are based on audited attendance reports, going all the way back to 1926. Prior to 1946, the attendance figures for USC home games listed in the Trojans media guide were "estimated" to the nearest thousand.
Comments
The obviously inaccurate announced attendance isn't really that big deal to me, but USC's inability to count the crowd just seem to be a joke......I guess whoever is in charge of that doesn't care enough to get it right, or just can't count that high. Either way, now I don't think they are even within the "nearest thousand".
Posted by: Scott | September 18, 2006 04:14 AM
Big low blow there SCott. This is completely irrelevant.
Posted by: CaliFB | September 18, 2006 06:23 AM
The 92,000 was probably just a figure thrown out there because they didnt have adequate means to get a proper count, on the same note of the poor crowd control in the Student section. I believe it was more than 92,000. You had female students sitting on the laps on their boy friends in the student section. You had a number of fans in the standing room only grass knolls area at bottom of stadium.
Posted by: TrojanEncore | September 18, 2006 09:19 AM
#1 ...who cares???
#2 ...having worked the stadium when i was a student, believe me they count every ticket.
#3 ...if you look around at the seats and don't see very many empty, then it probably is a full house..nez pas??????
Posted by: steve | September 18, 2006 02:00 PM
The Coliseum listed capacity is 92,000. My guess is that there may be a new policy of announcing the attendance at sellout games as 92,000, no matter what the actual body count. In fact, announcing the "capacity" as the attendance for sellout games has been the policy at many schools, including, for the last 30 years or so, Notre Dame.
If that is the new policy, it went into place with last year's UCLA game, and one would expect that the attendance at all the rest of this year's games would also be announced as 92,000. Again, good enough for Notre Dame, good enough for USC.
The Notre Dame policy is perhaps at odds with their media guide policy BEFORE all home games at ND had the same attendance figure. Notre Dame's historian, the legendary Steve Boda, researched every possible stat concerning Irish football--even going so far to order game films from across the country to verify, say, the accuracy of punt return records. He also delved into attendance figures, getting the actual box office report. And he was a stickler for accuracy, changing a Notre Dame attendance figure in the ND Guide when it was pointed out to him that the Guide's listed attendance varied by four (4), from the official game report.
I have no problem with SC reporting attendance at capacity for sellouts, if that is the new policy. If anything, it actually probably understated the bodies present at the Nebraska game.
And, in any event, things are better here, than at Stanford, where opening night at the new stadium attracted nearly 6,000 short of capacity.
Posted by: mikeg | September 18, 2006 02:10 PM
Well it should have been 91,998 since I had two extras that I were not used
Posted by: TrojanHorse | September 19, 2006 02:44 AM