Why worry about the Students who are not there.
If the team ever gets consistently above .500 in the B1G the student section will be full.
We have a fun team to watch, just not one that makes people come out in droves for when you get beat by the so called rivals as often as the U has and the lack of perceived recent success or party environment on game day, that seems cool and a place to be. We have heard the excuses, cuts in to partying, games are too early, no student tailgating etc, cost are still to high...
I accept the fact that football isn't a big deal for students at the U, hopefully some day it changes but right now we are kind of status quo. The Brewster era and the way it started off really hurt student attendance.
For all the in roads the U has made in getting students to stay on campus it is an expensive school to attend and to graduate from and still has a lot of commuter students. There are still roadblocks to getting a degree from the U and a high fallout rate, graduation rate of undergrads still hovers around 35%. High tuition and getting classes that you need, advisers that go through the motions and want to fill quotas or place students in any old degree, the U still has it's politics that bug people. Even with athletics they seem to have a heard mentality of steering people to particular degree programs, with a lot of people just wanting to play ball and have pro careers.
The politics of the U and the stigma of a not very engaged campus, is probably why alumni engagement and giving is on the lower side of the Big 10, the faculty at the U are really not that attached to the school, I even had Nebraska and Wisconsin grads as professors that used to bad mouth the football team all of the time. This was my personal experience, so it taints my perception of the U faculty as a whole.
That and a lot of kids that need to work get stuck working weekends even during game times, to help pay for there tuition and living costs, not everyone has parents helping out or has used service as a way to pay for school or gets scholarships. IT is realistic that a lot of students work on the weekends and during game day.
This may not seem like an underlying cause but it is. A lot of the students do watch the games, even on DVR at least they did when I was an undergrad. Sometimes it is more fun to watch on TV, drink a few beers with your friends, than be in person. May not seem obvious but it is what it is with HD, and technology sometimes you see the games better on TV than even in person and you don't have costs.
There are a lot of post docs and graduate students at the University with other undergraduate degrees with not a lot of affinity for the U especially Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois and Purdue grads, this is a place to try and get a better paying job or a stepping stone to Chicago or a bigger place like Atlanta or New York, that is what happens when your in a metro area with as many fortune 500 company's as this town has and the frostbite falls winters we some times have. As the team get's better, more students will identify and want to go because it will become more of the thing to do than just watching them lose "an old battle cry heard many times." The media still paints a picture of all they do is lose, and contributes to the stigma.
Can't put the cart before the horse, get the ones that are coming to the games already to bring friends and share the experience, and more will come.
It's probably going to take a serious run of unprecedented recent success for that affinity to develop and for kids to develop school pride. It is what it is, football just doesn't matter to some of the students that has been the case for four decades now. We have an improving football program, it get's more fun by the year seeing them compete at a higher level. Things may never get back to the way they used to be but I see more kids coming out in the years to come to have fun with there buddy's, the team is starting to turn the corner a little bit and when they turn the big corner then the wagon will not be full enough with people falling off. Things happen in steps, the team has improved I think eventually the student section will fill up more as the season roll along and more winning happens. The current staff has a track record of success and doing what seems impossible possible at some not so great schools. The kids are in better shape and we have more athletes than we have had in years, in Kill and staff we seem to have some light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully that light continues to shine brighter. Start beating Wisconsin and the kids will really get fired up as they have to hear it from there friends and peers quite often after that what now seems like annual beating, that would be a good a start as anything else. That isn't the only thing but it sure would help change perceptions.
