Utes hand out free tickets to fill stadium

Thursday night and a national ESPN broadcast, while something the Utes have often dreamed of, puts the pressure on. Add in that it was the second anniversary of the 9/11 terror in New York City, and the spotlight was as hot as it could be Thursday night in Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The Ute football team lived up to its end of the bargain with a come-from-behind 31-24 victory over Cal in a game that should have held ESPN's audience all the way through.

And Utah's behind-the-scenes folks — and citizens of the Salt Lake area — came through in an unprecedented way with a record crowd of 46,768, some 1,100 more than the school mark of 45,634 for a BYU game in 1998. Stadium capacity is listed as 45,017, and school enrollment is listed as 28,300.

Yes, there were plenty of giveaway tickets. The Utes held pep assemblies at 14 area high schools this week, and Ken Garff autos and Hogi Yogi stepped up as sponsors, giving tickets to high school students and making tickets available at their stores.

"I don't know if we've done it to this magnitude," said Ute marketing director Marc Amicone, saying the tactics used this week were similar to what's been done for some gymnastics crowds.

"But the redemption rate (of ticket vouchers) was a lot higher than what anybody expected, and the crowd was better than expected," said Amicone. "We've done giveaways before but not had this response.

"This is exciting."

Most of the stadium saw crowds standing above the top rows of seats, though there were a few empty red seats showing.

Obviously, the Utes wanted to present a good-looking crowd for the national TV cameras, one reason for the extra ticketing effort.

But Ute officials didn't know what would happen with a 5:45 p.m. kickoff on a Thursday evening, either. Would the students head home instead of to the stadium, and would those who worked during the day make the effort to climb the hill? "We weren't sure what to expect," Amicone said.