Cougars Stack Deck With A Full House Standing-Room-Only Crowd To Greet Cardinal

Coach Mike Price’s week-long sales pitch was rewarded Friday afternoon when Washington State announced that 39,700 tickets had been sold for today’s Pacific-10 Conference football game against Stanford.

Martin Stadium’s capacity is listed at 37,600, but bench seating in the general-admission section allowed for more tickets to be sold. By Friday afternoon, the Cougars had sold an additional 200 standing-room-only tickets, and another 550 were going quickly, athletic director Rick Dickson said.

“We’re probably going to set the single-game record for attendance,” athletic director Rick Dickson said Friday. “It’s going to be a great atmosphere and a deserving one.”

The 14th-ranked Cougars are in contention for their first Rose Bowl appearance in 67 years.

Today’s crowd figures to be Martin Stadium’s largest since last season’s Apple Cup drew 37,600.

But charting attendance at WSU has always been tricky because crowd size was once calculated based on a capacity of 40,000. By that measure, the Cougars reported five sellouts during the 1980s.

The last time the Cougars reported a crowd larger than 37,600 was for Price’s third home game as WSU coach. On Sept. 30, 1989, an announced crowd of 38,434 watched Todd Marinovich lead USC to a dramatic 18-17 victory.

WSU is expected to fare much better against Stanford today. The Cougars are 8-1 overall and 5-1 in the Pac-10, compared to 4-5 and 2-4 for the unranked Cardinal. WSU is favored by 15 points, but Stanford has won eight of its last nine games in Pullman - one reason Price has publicly lobbied for increased fan support.

WSU has drawn an average of 31,874 spectators to its five home games this season. Two of those games were televised in Pullman and Spokane.

This week, the WSU marketing department benefited from a generous assist. At a cost of $19,000, an anonymous donor paid for 3,800 student guest passes, which were then given away to anyone with a valid student ID.

Students spent more than 2 hours in line for those tickets, which were gone within an hour, Dickson said. About 200 pricey donor tickets remained unsold as of Friday morning, but they were gone by midafternoon, Dickson said. Those seats, located below the press box, can cost hundreds of dollars apiece.

Dickson cited several reasons for the increased demand, starting with the athletic department’s new 12th Man advertising campaign. “I probably got involved too late, but the last two home games we’ve gone pretty hard with this 12th Man thing,” he said.

Some tickets may have been sold after WSU fans came under national criticism for not showing enough support for one of the nation’s most exciting teams, Dickson said. When the Cougars failed to sell out the Oct. 25 game against Arizona despite a No. 10 national ranking, Sports Illustrated listed WSU fans in its weekly “losers” section.

Unlike the Arizona game, which was broadcast on ABC, the Stanford game will not be televised.

Game notes

Ryan Leaf is averaging 335.7 yards passing per game and has 3,021 for the season. Stanford’s Steve Stenstrom set the Pac-10 single-season record (3,627) in 1993… . Leaf ranks 20th on the Pac-10 career passing list after only 28 games.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Graphics: 1. The race to the Rose Bowl 2. Cougars vs. Stanford