hawknation2014":3sxppicd said:
I was also at a nationally broadcast Stanford game a couple months ago, and there were empty seats everywhere. I was able to get tickets on stubhub ten rows up from the field on the 30-yard line for $10 each. Despite being very competitive over the last seven years, Stanford fans might be the quietest and least passionate college football fans I have ever witnessed. I have also been to Cal games at Memorial Stadium, and although the seats are much more expensive, the fans in general were only slightly louder and more into it.
That's not to say that all Bay Area fans are terrible. Giants, Warriors, and Sharks' fans are some of the loudest in their respective sports. The Bay Area just doesn't seem to be that passionate about football. I think the comparison of 49ers' fans with L.A. Lakers' fans is an apt one.
I wouldn't judge Bay Area football fandom based on Stanford and Cal games (Stanford in particular). The way to think about it is that these are globally top educational institutions that happen to have really good football teams sometimes, whereas most NCAA schools they get lumped with are top amateur football programs that happen to teach classes sometimes. I grew up in Berkeley and Cal students and Stanford students just don't care about football in the way that the students and alumns of many other competitive programs do. They only really get up for the Cal/Stanford game each year, and that's MUCH more about the intellectual rivalry than the football rivalry.
As another example, Raiders fans, for instance, are MUCH more similar to the Giants/Warriors/A's/Sharks fans you're talking about. They've suffered through decades of awfulness and are still wildly passionate.
If anything I think the idea of football "fandom" and how one "performs" their fandom has really, really changed in the NFL in the past five to ten years or so, with Hawks fans and Chiefs fans leading the charge. MOST NFL fans still treat fandom as cheering on your team and that's it, whereas Hawks fans and Chiefs fans have really spearheaded the movement of coordinating to create noise before their opponents' offensive snaps in order to disrupt the other team and "participate" in their teams' efforts.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that (seriously -- it's the equivalent of NBA fans behind the basket waving and making noise when the opponent is at the free throw line), but it's a really different interpretation of fandom, and I think sometimes Hawks fans and Chiefs fans can mistake the "passion" of other teams' fanbases with how much or how little they're yelling in coordination to disrupt offenses (translation: it's a difference in how you INTERPRET the role of fandom, not a difference in passion -- I think the Raiders, an incredibly passionate fan base that doesn't coordinate, is a good example of that).
All that said though, at Levi's so far, 9ers fans are definitely pretty quiet. There's no escaping that.