One thing that is underrated in all of this is that those kids that grew up and live 2,3 4 hours away from campus when there not in school on the weekends, they want to go home see their parents, wash some clothes, chill, may be get some free food, have some fun off campus with friends they grew up with. Some have to work a job to work like do delivery's for grub hub, uber, Amazon. Even a lot of the suburban commuter kids do the gig economy jobs of delivery things like Target. Football has not been a huge deal at the U and the lack of conference championships and consistent winning at home doesn't help. All excuses but it has affected things.
Not everyone can afford time wise or money wise to go to the home football games. Like other's have mentioned there is a rather large International student population that doesn't follow American football or really understand it. I realize that the Game tickets for students are relatively inexpensive. Like others have said in other threads, I have seen the wrist band thing have a negative affect where kids have turned away and left once the lower deck fills up in the Student section.
Football student attendance seemed to peak in the latter Glen Mason years when there was quite a party scene in downtown Minneapolis. Some of those student tailgates got pretty wild with what the Minneapolis cops were letting go in the lots that were near the Metrodome. If I were the U of M I would reduce the Student section seating area down from 10,000 guaranteed seats to about 8,000. Next step get rid of the upper deck student sections all together, make those sections general seating to the general public and open up 119, 118, 113,114 to the rest of the Student section. Like others have said there is limited amounts of season ticket holder seats in those sections with the rented chair backs anyways.