Huge game. Huge crowd. Few problems.

While the final score of the game wasn't to Missouri Western's liking, the game day management was.

With 10,129 fans attending Saturday's geographic rivalry game between the Griffons and Northwest Missouri State, campus officials prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.

After having a couple of days to analyze it all, Western athletic director Dave Williams was smiling on Monday.

Always a good sign.

"We obviously had a lot of planning meetings, and everybody did their part," Williams said.

The three areas of most concern prior to the game were parking, egress/regress and seating.

Thankfully, workers earlier in the week tightened the final bolts on the new visitor's side bleacher system - more than 2,100 seats - expanding the stadium's previous capacity by more than 1,600 seats. Several more sets of portable bleachers also were hauled in for the event.

"The new bleachers worked great," Williams said. "We thought it created a great atmosphere. I thought there was much less conflict than I've heard about from years past, because we had people separated."

Williams had heard stories about fan conflicts during previous meetings in this heated rivalry, when both overflow Northwest fans and Western fans were crowded together on the south grandstand.

Instead, a party atmosphere prevailed.

"The people were tailgating since 5:30 a.m. - that's the earliest I heard about - and I thought everyone acted very respectfully, even in situations where there was interaction," Williams said.

The only significant glitch appeared to be the speakers and stereo system, which worked in pregame tests, then fizzled for a while on Saturday. Workers were able to get that problem corrected in the fourth quarter.

A number of entities participated in the game-day effort that Williams viewed as somewhat of a shakedown cruise, not only for other Western events but also for large crowds that could arrive on campus beginning next summer for the Kansas City Chiefs training camp.

Those entities included the Missouri Department of Transportation.

"They were actually counting cars for us on the way in," Williams said. "We had a consultant on campus helping us look at the traffic flow pattern for large events like this."

Williams estimated that up to 5,000 cars were on campus for a game that shattered the previous attendance record of 9,207 set in 2007, which was the last time these two teams met in St. Joseph. Williams said people were assigned to counting vehicles both in lots and the grassy areas on campus.

By 12:45 p.m., all lots on the north side of campus were full and fans were parking on the grass up and down McCarthy Drive. But the parking load, Western officials realized, was out of balance.

"We go over to the south side of campus, and the Mitchell entrance and those lots over there were entire ghost towns," Williams said.

That prompted the university to close off the entrance to the campus at McCarthy Drive and Faraon Street, forcing fans to use the Mitchell entrance and find open parking in that vicinity.

"That balanced out the parking spaces on campus, which then helped us get everyone out of there," Williams said.

Williams said he hopes the experience helps the university deal with large crowds it hopes to draw to other events, and not just the Western-Northwest football game every two years.

"The support from the city, the county and the community was tremendous, from helping with bleachers we brought in, to helping us with some of the people that showed up," Williams said. "It was a great community event."

Sports reporter Rick Dunaway can be reached at rickd@npgco.com