Stanford Football Draws Embarrassingly Small Crowd As Marching Band Claims 'Stanford Hates Fun' Over Control Controversy

Stanford football has not reached a bowl game since 2018 and has not been nationally relevant since Christian McCaffrey was in Palo Alto in 2016. As a result, nobody cares.

Now, Stanford is an academic school first and foremost. Many of its students have no interest in football to begin with. Others might have decided to watch Saturday's game against Arizona State from the comfort of their own homes, where the beer is in the fridge and other games are just a click away.

Whatever the reason, the crowd at Stanford Stadium was nonexistent. Attendance numbers may have been in the hundreds, or at the very least, the (very) low thousands.

Here is how it looked during warmups:

Here is how it looked as the home team took the field:

While a few stragglers may have made their way over from the tailgate to the game after kickoff, it wasn't many. The crowd as the end of the first quarter was just as bad as it was in pregame.

If Stanford football's attendance problem wasn't bad enough, the marching band took what appeared to be a direct shot at the administration during its halftime performance.

The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band, for those who don't know, aims to "bring funk to the funkless, and to spread a unique brand of irreverent musical entertainment." They're weird, they're goofy and they're a lot of fun.

However, the administration is trying to put a chokehold on what makes the Stanford band what it is.

A little while back, a party got out of hand in Palo Alto and it was blamed on the band. However, it was not an official band event and the person who hosted the party was not an active member of the band.

Ever since, the Stanford administration has tightened the reins. It has taken a more active role in the band's performances and has taken more control what the band can and cannot do.

In what seemed to be direct response to the administration's new policies, the band unfurled a banner during its performance on Saturday. It said that Stanford hates fun.

The band going after its own administration while Stanford football struggled with a head coach-less Arizona State team in front of just a few hundred people was a bad look all around. Is it time for the Cardinal to make a change and turn a new page?