Husky Stadium Has Been Running on Empty All Season

The UW's Saturday home gatherings appear to be the smallest in at least four decades.

The true barometer of how bad football has fallen off for the University of Washington is not the Jimmy Lake shove and resulting pink slip, nor the overly embarrassing Montana stumble or even the 88-yard rumble with a fumble.

No, the most disturbing development surrounding an incredibly disappointing season for those in Montlake is what you don't see these days — fans stuffed into Husky Stadium.

Huge gaps of empty seats remain well after kickoff. Parking lots are only partially filled with enthusiastic tailgaters. Stadium traffic jams following the games are, get this, manageable.

While the school offers only paid attendance figures and never actual crowd counts, this year's home games collectively have been the worst in four to five decades, according to longtime observers.

The opener against Montana, before all the losing began, barely drew two-thirds of the 70,000 stadium capacity.

The Arkansas State game two weeks later, against a badly overmatched opponent, didn't even fill up half the seating configuration.

For the Arizona State game two weeks ago, an alarmingly sparse gathering sat through the playing of the national anthem, as shown in the accompanying photo, and the crowd might have topped out at around 30,000.

"This is just crazy to me," former UW cornerback Dana Hall said. "How did we get here?"

Huge gaps in seating in the south end of Husky Stadium were visible for the ASU game / Dan Raley

Many reasons have contributed to the attendance decline, among them remaining pandemic fears, a resistance to COVID-19 vaccination or testing requirements, decidedly poor weather, an unattractive non-conference schedule and, on top of it all, a bad football team.

Longtime Husky season-ticket holder Bobby Erickson, after looking over the tepid Arizona State gathering, noted, "It looked like a poorly attended spring game."

Adam Cooney, a former UW offensive tackle, took the opportunity to infuse a little levity into the attendance woes by concluding, "Now I know how it feels to be a Washington State fan all those years."

No one is laughing inside the athletic department.

The significant loss of fans, and resulting revenues, has been known to cost people their jobs, beginning at the top. 

UW athletic director Jen Cohen, according to alumni sources, is facing intense scrutiny from upper campus over the recent failures of her football and basketball teams, and resulting fan support, and needs to turn things around fairly quickly.

The East end zone seats were nearly empty on this S / Dan Raley

While the shove seemed to set everything in motion, Lake wasn't fired for his ill-advised physical interaction with linebacker Ruperake Fuavai during the Oregon game, which was captured on national TV. 

The empty seats likely put the Husky football coach on the hot seat well before his dismissal, with the fan count dropping more and more with each loss, and leaving him vulnerable to a job change. 

Cohen, when meeting with the media to announce Lake's termination, wouldn't fully address the alarm over the attendance decline, but seemed to acknowledge it played a part in her actions. 

"There wasn't one factor that led me to this decision," Cohen said. "Wins and losses, fan support, you know that's just one of many factors you're considering when you're making a decision this impactful. What I think I would just say is this was a very thoughtful decision that took me a lot of time and counsel in evaluating it. There's not just one factor or incident that led me to this."

What she didn't say was her UW athletic department suffered through severe revenue losses during the 2020 pandemic-restricted football season that consisted of four home games without fans. Employees were laid off. Coaches took pay cuts. Services were stripped back.

Coming out of that precarious situation, the school had little room for coaching error. The UW is still paying off the Husky Stadium remodel of eight years ago. Donors have been being asked to pick up Lake's $10 million buyout as well as pony up a potentially sizable increase in paying for a new coach.

The Arkansas State game was not a big draw.  / Dan Raley

With the Apple Cup coming to Husky Stadium on Friday, everyone will get another sense of where Husky football stands with the fans. Even in stark seasons, the facility generally is overflowing for this cross-state rivalry. Yet there are only so many Cougars fans who can fill in the blanks this time.

When there's a disconcerting drop-off in attendance, the football coach isn't the only one who pays for the shortfall. Cohen has to make good on this problem or likely relinquish her role, too.

Erickson, who shared in the wildly popular Sonny Sixkiller era and the seasons leading up to and involving the 1991 national championship team, said the stadium by his estimate was no more than one-third full for the California and Arizona State games. This is all new to him.

"Fast forward to the current atmosphere in Husky Stadium — it's the most apathetic fan base I've witnessed in my 50 years attending games," he said. "The crowds are tiny."

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