In 2013 the attendance was 47,000 against Washington.
I was there. That was a generous number. As was 21k on Saturday. I'd guess more like 12-15k a good 4-5 of which were USF fans.
One possible reason the numbers appear inflated on Saturday was that they were giving away 200 section tickets at the gate for those who had purchased 300 section tickets. Soldier Field personnel had stacks of lower level tickets and they just took ours and gave us new ones. So I would imagine I probably got double counted? I don't know for sure, but the group I was with did end up with two sets of tickets.
It's my view that the cumulative effect of the worst 11-12 year period across both sports in the history of the school during which we've been the single worst sports program in the nation has had a cascading effect of declining interest. Which makes complete sense.
I'm an Illini fan who lives in Chicago, I've attended just about every football and basketball game we've played in the city since I've lived here, I'm 100% the target audience for these games, but I fully recognize and appreciate that the program isn't in a place where playing at Soldier Field is in our best interests, so I'm sure we're done with it for the time being and that's fine.
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