i hate to stand up for blaker, but they could've easily said 17k counting tickets they gave away to people who never even dreamed of showing up, the athletic dept probably had a lot of tickets that were counted as "sold" that were never used, not to mention people who probably bought tickets or were given tickets that never showed. obviously i wasn't there and I couldn't tell on tv what it looked like honestly, but the figure could easily be smudged in the ballpark of 3k more than were actually there.