
The Cougars have played 18 games in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ since the formation of the Pac-10 and have averaged 46,127 fans, or about 10,000 empty seats per game. Only once, in 1990, did the Cougars fill the old place – 55,520 – and in retrospect the positive variables were in place for that near-sellout.
ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ (5-2) was coming off a rousing 35-26 victory at No. 15 USC, and the only live telecast was on Prime Ticket, a fringe cable outfit from Southern California. ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s KMSB, Channel 11, announced it would televise the game live, piggy-backing Prime Ticket’s feed, but a ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ judge banned Channel 11 from doing so.
Perhaps more important, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ had not played in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ for 28 days. Former UA athletic directors Cedric Dempsey and Jim Livengood frequently said the middle-class ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ football fan could not afford week-after-week ticket purchases. When home games were spaced with two or three weeks in between, more tickets were sold.
The most compelling UA-WSU game ever played in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ was in 1993, yet it drew a mere 46,675 when Desert Swarm was 6-0 and ranked No.7 and Washington’s State’s “Palouse Noose†defense, No. 2 in NCAA total defense nationally, arrived ranked No. 25.
The game kicked off at 12:30 p.m., televised on ABC, and it was 84 degrees at kickoff. Yet there were 10,000 empty seats. Few UA games in history were more attractive: the Wildcats were coming off back-to-back victories against USC and Stanford in front of sold-out crowds. Alas, all three were played in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and the middle class fan couldn’t afford to attend all three.
So they chose glamour teams Stanford and USC and watched the WSU game on network TV. ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ won 9-6.