Yeah, the NFL has relaxed their blackout rules considerably, I think it's 85% capacity releases the home restriction. I can't claim to know all the attendance answers, I'm an out of state alum that makes it 2-3 games a year, but one that makes the most sense is to directly target fans that are watching the games on TV locally.
These are the fans that are coming up with the dumbest possible reasons not to go to games including weather and 'inconvenient' start times. The majority of them would be students and alums (not your casual fan) that can get into the stadium spending $20 or less on many occasions. These are also Bulls fans that to a lesser degree aren't associated with the weak scheduling complaint because they are watching these games at home.
You probably get some that just change the channel to the next game in HD, but then again you probably get some that are forced to come because they really wanted to see our game. Either way, local blackouts won't really hurt the USF attendance issue at this point imo. I understand how it can go against you in the professional realm, because people sometimes stop showing up out of principle, but you're looking to force the hand of people that already care about USF first, just making every excuse not to get to a home game.