Walking into Trader Joe’s at USC Village is always a surprise. Sometimes, I can be in and out in a matter of minutes with my usual strawberries and Pumpkin Blondie Brownies. In the less fortunate scenarios, though, it feels like everyone had the same idea — and the line is looping through the store all the way to the opposite end. Similarly, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum always seems to be a hit or miss on game days.

For highly anticipated games, the stadium is sold out, like for the upcoming football game against Washington (7-0, 4-0 Pac-12) Nov. 4. When USC played Notre Dame in 2022, the Coliseum was at 94% capacity. Other times, though, the showout is underwhelming, to say the least, with pockets of empty red seats scattered everywhere. At the game against unranked Colorado last year, the stadium was only at 79% capacity.

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The Coliseum is a historical stadium celebrating its centennial anniversary this year. It is even a National Historic Landmark and has the capacity to accommodate more than 70,000 fans. Yet, even with so much space and history, many of those seats go to waste every game.

Why? Well, I believe there are a few factors contributing to this “barrenness,” with the first and foremost being the school culture.

USC (6-2, 4-1 Pac-12) has always been known to be a big football school. Regardless of its ups and downs, championship wins, consecutive losing seasons, questionable coaching choices and Heisman trophy winners, people often associate the University with its sports and spirit. However, that Trojan spirit does not always directly correlate to attendance to said sports.

Us Trojans here take our game days seriously, no doubt. We might not wake up early for class, but we sure never miss our alarms for a day of tailgating and barbeques. Walk anywhere within a mile of campus on a game day and you will see cardinal and gold everywhere. But by the time it’s kickoff, many have tapped out or chosen to watch the game from elsewhere.

Not to say that’s everyone. The student section is always filled to a certain degree, but for many games that don’t have as much “hype” surrounding them, some students skip out on sitting in the sun-baked stands.

At other colleges in the country, the campus culture is very different. I’m sure some schools face very sad student sections lacking cheering and noises for their team; there are also the schools where game days aren’t just an experience, but a lifestyle. Schools like Ohio State (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten), Florida (5-2, 3-1 SEC) and Alabama (7-1, 5-0 SEC) have insane school spirit. College Magazine ranked them as the top three colleges — in that order — with the most school spirit this year.

The rest of the stands show the same lack of attendance. I think being in L.A. holds a big chunk of the responsibility — a city with endless options of things to do on a weekend.

Non-student fans are offered with a lot more options of things to do in the city than, say, a football fan in Columbus, Ohio. Going to a football game in L.A. is a choice, while going to a football game in Columbus might just be the only option for you on a Saturday night. No offense if you’re from Columbus.

Now, whether you end up at the Coliseum or not after a long day of legal game day activities might not seem like a big deal, but it does make a difference. The more fans present, the better the overall student experience and home-game advantage for the team.

The biggest impact comes financially. More fans in attendance means more tickets sold. Students with season passes already have paid upfront, but even though not showing up may not affect ticket revenue, the stadium loses out on possible food and drink sales. After all, one of the top three big cash flows for college teams, according to Forbes, is the sales of tickets, food, drinks and merchandise.

The business and finance of sports surpasses just the players and whether the team wins or loses. It involves a much bigger team that includes people like the coaches, sponsors, custodians, vendors and, most importantly, the fans.

Anjali Patel is a senior writing about the expanding landscape of business and legality of sports in her column, “Money Plays,” which runs every other Thursday. She is also an associate managing editor at the Daily Trojan.