Last night was not the first time the upper deck student section was not full. It wasn't full for SJSU, Penn State or Ole Miss.
I spoke with a senior person in the athletic department about this at the Ole Miss game and expressed my frustration. She told me that the administration was aware of it and wanted to do something but Dr Witt mandated that they allocate more tickets to students and the SGA refused to stop the block seating OR institute any per-game ticket pulling (as was suggested).
So you have a combination problem... the student population has grown so they wanted to give more tickets to the students. But the SGA steadfastly refuses to change the ticket allocation policies so that those that don't go to the games lose their tickets so those that WANT to go to the game can.
IMO, the problem lies with the SGA - places like TxA&M, Tennessee, USCe and others have programs in place that track who comes and who doesn't and rewards those that do and penalizes those that don't. But part of that is removing automatic access to tickets to greeks and removing the concept of block seating - which won't happen unless the University forces it.
BTW - if you think this problem is new, do a search... there was an article in the CW that in 2008 approximately 4% of IRON BOWL tickets went unused. To remind you, we were undefeated, ranked #1 and about to beat Auburn for the first time - EVER - in Tuscaloosa and nearly 900 students had tickets but couldn't make it from within 5 miles of campus to the stadium.
It's an absolute disgrace.