OK, question for you (this should be easy to convince the non-believers): how many seats are in the largest (midfield) 300-level sections? It's about 800, if I remember correctly. Should be easy to count 100% empty sections, subtract from the Duke total, and recognize that they weren't within 8,000 of the announced figure.
It's wild that SU pushed this 29k lie last night, especially after their straight-faced "we count tickets scanned" minor fib for the past few years. I'm sure they didn't even sell 25,000 for UVa. As you know, even if people get into the building and want to move down to better seats where somebody no-showed, there will still be scattered people who stay in their purchased seats. That'd mean there would be at least some people east of midfield, some people to the right of the student overflow. But there weren't. And the top of 314 was totally empty as well.
That was really weird. As I said, more ridiculous than any stunt Gross ever pulled with attendance.