To see an interactive database of sporting event attendance, click here.Editor’s note:  This story is the fourth in a five-part series involving attendance at LSU athletic events. It seems Death Valley is hiding people. The much-anticipated 2009 matchup between Florida and LSU drew 93,129 fans — yet the stadium’s seating capacity is listed at 92,400.Games against Louisiana-Lafayette (92,443), Auburn (92,654), Louisiana Tech (92,584) and Arkansas (93,013) also drew crowds greater than the listed capacity last season.But the answer isn’t as complicated as it may seem.”We include the number of credentials we give out to the media and those people that work the events,” said Michael Bonnette, associate athletic director and sports information director. “The number can sometimes be higher than what the capacity of the stadium can hold.”LSU Ticket Office manager Brian Broussard said anyone who watches the game in the stadium is counted in the final attendance numbers.”We count the press level, and we count Boy Scouts who work sort of as ushers,” he said. “We count people who don’t occupy seats that are sold on the stadium but are at attendance at the event.”Broussard said photographers and other press members on the field who aren’t allowed access to the press box are still included in the final attendance. Senior Associate Athletic Director Herb Vincent said facility and concession workers are also included.”There’s a small army of people that have to work to put a game on, and we count everybody in the stadium as people who attend the game,” Vincent said.There are no-shows at every game, but highly anticipated matchups naturally put more fans in seats and attract more media attention.”If it’s something like the Alabama game or the Florida game, you have a television crew here, and they might have an HD crew here,” Vincent said. “ESPN Gameday may be here, and they have a crew.”Broussard said the ticket office already knows the 2010 game against Alabama in Tiger Stadium will be sold out. “It’s not announced yet, but we don’t say we have those tickets on sale when people call in,” Broussard said. “We just know this from past history.”Adjustments are made for the media when the press box gets crowded, and as the accommodations rise, so does attendance.”We’ll issue passes to people who don’t have seats,” Vincent said. “For really big games, we’ll put stools in the back of the press box that we don’t have for the other games to let extra [media members] sit.”Ronnie Haliburton, assistant athletic director of facilities and grounds, was a former standout tight end for LSU in the late ’80s. He said the maximum seating was around 75,000 when he played at Tiger Stadium. “We only had one upper deck,” Haliburton said. “We didn’t have that capacity then. I think the largest crowd may have been 82,000.”Tiger Stadium added more than 10,000 seats to the east upper deck in 2000, and a club-level seating area was installed to the upper west deck in 2005.”The first upper west deck was constructed in 1974,” Haliburton said. “That’s when we had the press box in the upper west deck that you saw prior to 2000. That upper deck came down in 2005 and was reconstructed between the 2005 and 2006 seasons.” Vincent said the press box was expanded when the new upper west deck was installed.”We’re able, for instance, now to accommodate an extra radio crew if an independent broadcast crew wants to broadcast a game,” Vincent said. “There’s more room up there.”Haliburton said there are talks of reconstruction to the south and north ends of the stadium, but no plans or dates are set. He said it’s difficult to predict the changes to the stadium in the next 15 to 20 years.”These concepts could come to fruition in the future, and that’s all predicated on revenue,” he said. “We are landlocked by the campus. Whatever we do, it also has to be dependent on the growth and expansion of our existing campus.”Other Southeastern Conference schools will expand in the near future. Alabama already has plans to exceed a maximum capacity of 100,000 after reconstruction to Bryant-Denny Stadium this summer.- – – -Contact Rowan Kavner at [email protected]