UCLA football fandom is MIA

Rose Bowl attendance on Bruins game days is waning and might be lower than you think.

- BY BEN BOLCH

A SPARSE TURNOUT by Bruins fans fills some of the Rose Bowl as UCLA kicks off to Utah on Saturday. The most densely packed section featured the Utes' fans.

The most densely packed section inside the Rose Bowl on Saturday was filled with fans wearing the colors of the visiting team.

Swathed in red and white, they crammed into one corner of the century-old stadium for what amounted to a nightlong celebration.

Fans cheering for the home team were more subdued and scattered throughout a stadium that seemed about one-third full, outnumbered by empty seats, visiting fans and those massive blue-and-gold tarps covering most of each end zone.

Deliberately or not, Fox cameras inside the stadium showed those watching from home only wide shots filled with graphics that obscured the paltry crowd.

By late in the third quarter, the only suspense remaining in UCLA's 43-10 blowout loss to Utah was waiting for the announced attendance. Reporters in the press box were given a figure of 35,032, which seemed inflated given so many empty seats below them.

It was.

The scan count, a tally of people actually inside the facility, was 27,785, according to athletic officials.

Creative accounting is the norm in college football given there are no standardized practices for attendance reporting. The Big Ten and other conferences leave it up to individual schools to devise their own formulas.

UCLA defines its announced attendance as tickets distributed - including freebies-plus non-ticketed and credentialed individuals such as players, coaches, staff, vendors, cheerleaders, band members, performers and even media.

Across town, USC's announced attendance includes only tickets distributed, according to an athletic department spokesperson, which was 62,841 for the season opener against Missouri State.