The reason why you see empty seats in the Carrier dome is due to the fact that there is so many seats available, the urgency to get tickets, especially for non-name games is very low. At schools like Duke, Kentucky, or Kansas, you have to fork out thousands for season tickets, or get lucky to get tickets for a game or two. At Syracuse, you can walk up for pretty much any game but one where they're trying to break the record, and still get a ticket. What this does is create various tiers of attendence for games. Syracuse usually draws 5-10k preseason (lemoyne), 15-20k non conference cupcakes (highpoint), 20-25k in conference lesser teams(rutgers, seton hall), and 25-30k+ marquee/rivaly games (Uconn/georgetown).