This. I think it's fair to both acknowledge that there's a problem with attendance (nothing new, this has been the case for an eternity for IU football), and that the weekly photos from the pre-game showing 15,000 people in the stands are a distortion. I'm out of state and have to watch on tv, but what I see on tv during the game, in particular during the first half, always shows significantly better attendance than the pre-game photo posts from our fans, our rivals fans, and the media. We're a late arriving fan base, and students tend to leave early in blowouts in either direction. Like it or not, that's fair enough.
That said, the best solution to attendance is to win regularly. There's only so much the athletic department can do to draw fans and get them to stay in the stadium. If the program were able to manage 7 wins with some regularity, I'm pretty confident that attendance would push much closer to a 50k average.
It's also fair to acknowledge that, even with all the work done to the stadium, the experience for fans is still pretty dated. I do not believe that we'll need more seating any time soon, or perhaps ever, but I think there have been missed opportunities with the stadium upgrades. I'd guess that the stadium is still 90-95% metal bench seating? That's an outdated setup and. Unless you're super passionate, sitting for 3.5+ hours on a metal bench just doesn't meet the expectations of most of today's fans. The stadium definitely needs a bigger variety of seating options with various levels of amenities. UCF and some other programs have done an incredible job with this in recent years. Prior to the SEZ enclosure, I thought it would be a good idea to consider eliminating large chunks or all of the bench seating and replacing it with individual seats. A well-designed addition could have kept the seating number roughly the same by utilizing new end zone space to keep the capacity similar. While the additions have provided some additional options for more premium seating, it's still pretty slim - more suites, loge boxes, and a variety of other tiered seating options are needed and have been popular at a lot of other programs.