ESPN's Ted Miller (their Pac-10 reporter) alerted me to this little piece of news.
A Facebook page has been set up to promote the Cardinal's potential availability for an at-large BCS bowl berth.
So I ran over, excited to check out the tens of thousands of Cardinal fans who had pledged their support to be in Pasadena or Glendale or whereever...and they haven't even reached 3,500 mobilized fans, with another ten thousand still not sure of their status and over 400 fans actually declining the invites. Way to show support for your top ten team; I'm sure they really appreciate it.
After the jump, one Cardinal fan rues the caues for Stanford's fan attendance problem.
4) Marketing - it has been said before, but the athletic department's marketing of the team in the past has been abysmal. I don't know enough to talk intelligently about details here, but I do know that it has felt pretty amateurish in the past. I think it is a bit better this year, but they really need to work not just on getting the word out, but doing so in a way that gets people interested in going to a game.
So, what do I think needs to be done? For one, the athletic department should reach out to local news outlets more (or maybe start cultivating the blogger culture if they think that would be more effective). They really, really need to work on the atmosphere in the stadium, especially in the upper deck, and it wouldn't hurt to step up the efforts on marketing the team.
Unfortunately, I think the biggest thing that is needed is time. Every year of success adds to the pool of fans that can go to the game. The team was so bad for so long however that I think it will take several more years of success before the fan base can recover. Unfortunately, I think we'll lose Harbaugh long before that happens... and then... who knows?