...we have a weird tendency to cherry-pick examples, which undermines our credibility a bit
This was a Sunday night game on New Year's Eve while school was out of session. That's a fairly easy excuse.
A week or two ago another photo was making the rounds here ..but it was from 20 minutes before tipoff. There was another photo taken mid-game and attendance (while clearly better than before rip-off) was still pretty bad. I think the second picture is a much more effective photo, but because it doesn't look as bad at a quick glance, it's not the one that gets shared.
The reality is that we don't have to take misleading photos or shortcuts to make Utah basketball attendance look bad - so I'm not sure why we so often do