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The announced crowd for Thursday’s home game at Reser Stadium against Stanford was 30,912. Clearly, there were nowhere near that many people in the stadium, which seats nearly 44,000.

The picture that accompanies this blog was shot from the pressbox toward the new east side of the stadium during the opening kickoff. I could not see how many people were sitting below me on the west side. It also should be noted that when the marching band left its section of the south end zone to perform its halftime routine that left just a few scattered folks in that section. And there was plenty of room to mosey around the Terrace in the north end zone.

I don’t have a good guess how many people were there … and in a way it doesn’t matter. The announcement crowd itself represents a disastrous symbol for the football program. OSU is averaging 34,492 fans in its five home games to date this season. As recently as 2014 it was 42,175 per game. The record is 45,509 in the 2010 season, which followed the two campaigns in which the Beavers played the Civil War game with Oregon for a shot at the Rose Bowl.

And that 30,912 crowd is the lowest since the 30,782 that showed up for the season opener of the 2,000 campaign against Eastern Washington. At that time the capacity at Reser was about 35,000.