Even as successful as Stanford has been the last two years, they struggle to fill the stadium. In many ways, the Stanford problem is the same as NU. Private school in a big conference that is located in the same city as a NFL team. I feel that NU is headed in the right direction with attendance, but it's a long struggle. But, I felt we are ahead of Stanford in the fight to fill the seats. I'm optimistic that there are football fans in Chicago that we can convert. Here is what a Stanford blog had to say:

I tried watching but was distracted by all the empty seats
Posted by Jon Wilner on October 24th, 2010 at 8:24 am |

I’ll have grades for each team in the next 24 hours but wanted to make quick note of the Saturday crowds. (This isn’t big news, obviously, but it’s worth addressing — especially with two of the three head coaches expressing their displeasure.)

I can’t remember worse collective fan support for the locals, which were all at home for one of just two Saturdays this season (the other is Nov. 27).

* Stanford announced 36,679 for Homecoming, which was hugely misleading. I’m not sure the 50,000-seat stadium was even half full — and the head coach noticed.

“Our fans didn’t even bother coming to the game today,” Jim Harbaugh said.

Note: The Cardinal’s official attendance figures are based on tickets distributed (and remember, some of the tickets are distributed for free). As a result, its announced crowds often grossly overstate the turnstile count.

It really hurts when you have a fan base that leaves your local area at a pretty high rate. Given the lack of technology jobs in Indiana, which is getting better, Purdue has the same type of problems.

My tailgating group is 80% out of state people. In fact, I have one person I know who I went to college with who currently lives in Indiana.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Schools like Stanford and Northwestern have mostly kids in the top 5-10% of all college students nationally. These kids study alot -- and I would expect, on average, much more than the rest of the bell curve attending other schools. When your top priority is trying to earn straight As at Stanford or Northwestern and build your career in investment banking or high technology, who the hell has time for a football game? That lack of broad interest in sports from students then carries with them into their alumni years. Stanford alums give a lot of money to various academic programs. That's their first loyalty -- not the football team.

Stanford only has 7,000-8,000 undergrads, why build a 50,000 seat stadium? Even if all the students were college football aficionados, attendance would still be bad.

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team Mully & Hanley
team Meatpants

The politics and implications of building new stadiums or remodeling, expanding old stadiums is rarely simple.

Exactly, that's why Duke's Cameron arena holds1/3rd the seated capacity of UNC's basketball arena.

Also, there might be hesitation on the part of yer average joe sports fan to venture onto what are perceived as elite/exclusive private institutions of higher lurnin' vs a public university. I mean, imagine you're a never-attended-college union plumber and attend a game at one of these high-falutin' elite private schools and then after a day of tailgaiting and spiking your stadium soft drink with flask-whiskey you stumble out to the parking lot and this is what you discover coming at you in the dark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLh0RMpit1k