Is it worth chasing those ghost fans in today's CFB reality? Forget increased butts-in-seat attendance in G5 and definitely forget expanding bleachers to 40,000 plus nowadays, that ship has sailed. Those peeps are long gone and aren't going to show up outside of some pretty specific circumstances.
Now the best way for a G5 school to have a prominent program would be to A) Win, obviously and B)
make sure the TV experience is top notch.
As in making sure the sidelines look good, the stands are crammed along the TV sight-lines, the social media is strong, make sure there are multiple camera angles, research assistants for the broadcasters, and state of the art broadcast facilities. And so on and so forth.
I think a NFL-level TV experience broadcast for a G5 program is the next natural step. For instance, MACtion: make it a broadcast laboratory with Twitter comments and instagram posts and Facebook likes and 4K HD and
EyeVision cameras and SkyCam.
All of that is cheaper, and probably more effective, than trying to putt butts-in-seats.