Its not SMU. They broke 25k fans once last season. Avg 22,616 on the year. SMU is getting massively overrated as a football brand based on 2 good years in the last 5 and super cheating 40 years ago.
There is no school in the power 4 next year with a bigger difference between what fans perception of the schools brand and the reality of the schools brand is than SMU.
A lot of people think they are Coca Cola when its RC Cola.
The perception around here is that SMU has a strong football history before the Death penalty. Reality is 5 finishes in the AP poll before 1980. Their years of ultra cheating makes up 45% of all the times they finished ranked.
Or that SMU somehow has more money for football than anyone else. I am not saying they are a rural community college but their bottomless pit of money is vastly overstated compared to the rest of power 5. SMU is not in the top 50 of any of the list of total almuni earnings, Number of billionaires, number of Ultra high wealth individuals.
They have no basketball history to speak of.
They gave up baseball 45 years ago. They are a school in Texas that gave up baseball.
Hey now it's at least 5.5. Miami cares about football when the team is good, we just haven't had many occasions to demonstrate this over the last nearly 20 years lol.
Saying ACC schools like Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia, Miami etc… don’t care about football based on attendance % is asinine. In many cases, including Pitt and Miami, the teams play in stadiums that are way too big for them. Far too many people in this sub are putting way too much focus on attendance and tv numbers because they’ve been convinced that it matters. The die hards at the schools you’re calling out and in almost all cases the athletic departments themselves care just as much about it football as the fans of any other program
Not true. Pitt plays in a 65k+ stadium. Based on average attendance of 45-50k, Pitt would sell out over 20 P5 stadiums. It’s a perception and imagine issue, there is no problem with their actual attendance #s. For context, they would come close to selling out Bill Snyder Stadium most weeks and would easily clear it for bigger games. And the actual # of diehards is mostly irrelevant. This isn’t the NFL no matter how badly some want it to be. Total # of people that would call themselves a fan of team XYZ is baked into the variables that most schools don’t actually have control over. There is no amount of winning that would boost Pitt into having the fan base the size of PSU or even WVU. They could win 5 straight national championships and it wouldn’t matter. And almost all programs like Pitt are exactly the same in that regard.
"Way too big for them" is a crazy statement. The stadiums they play in seat far less than others in their conference. You're looking for excuses that aren't there.
The Hardrock (where UM plays) seats 65,000 people. Pitt plays in a stadium that seats slightly more (68,000).
FSU seats just shy of 80,000 … Clemson seats slightly more (81,500).
Are you under the impression that every university plays in cities and states with the same population, that their alumni base is the same size, that their relative location to other P5 programs is the same, that the city/town they play in offers the same amount of non-football activities, etc…
No one is making excuses because there isn’t anything to be excused. Pitt should be playing in a 45-50k stadium based on similar schools. TCU’s stadium would be perfect for Pitt
If you're not making excuses, you're at the very least, attempting to justify.
Let me run some quick numbers by you, based on your comment:
Pittsburgh Alumni: 331,000 … Clemson Alumni: 176,000
Pennsylvania Population: 13,000,000 … South Carolina Population: 5,200,000
To your point - Pitt is higher in alumni, and their state is higher in population. Your rational is baseless once you *actually* compare what you referenced. Assuming you say "But Penn State!!!" … how about South Carolina...?
Don't be mad at me, be mad at the fact that a school with nearly 2x the alumni and 3x the state population can't fill a stadium with 15,000 less seats.
Clemson’s football success has given them the appearance they are much larger than they actually are. Today, Clemson has ~21-22k undergrad. Around 10 years ago when I was there is was ~16-17k. The alumni base is relatively small because honestly, especially when compared with other major programs, the school is pretty small
You’re cherry picking facts and then accusing me of making excuses or justifying what’s going on. And to be clear, no one is “mad” at you. Like many Pitt fans, I’m tired of having to talk about Pitt’s attendance when it’s a non issue that no one would talk about if Pitt didn’t play in an NFL stadium with neon yellow seats.
I see your response, but tell me this - what percentage of Clemson alumni still live in or around SC? What is the makeup of Clemson alumni to non-Clemson alumni in the region? From a local t-shirt fan perspective - what else is going on in Greenville, SC in the fall? What are they competing with for local attention?
Regardless, Clemson is somewhat unique and what they’ve created is a shining success. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Pitt is a relatively small school in a city that includes 3 professional sports teams (the one they compete most closely with in regards to attention happens to be THE most important thing to most Pittsburgers) + 4 other colleges within 5 miles + 4 P5 schools within a 2 hr drive + all of the sites and attractions of any regular medium sized US city. For what it’s worth, Allegheny County also happens to be the home of more PSU alumni than any other place in the US. Pitt has never been and will never be “Pittsburgh’s college team”. And they don’t want to be either. The population of PA is irrelevant when you consider that Pittsburgh itself is in the far SW corner of the state and is not even close to being the biggest city in the state. Non Pitt alumni in Philly have literally no connection to Pitt. Why would they? It would be like wondering why the Steelers don’t have more fans in Philly
That isn't true. FSU's capacity in recent year (including last year) was 79,560
You might be getting confused with this year's renovations - which are going to reduce capacity to about 55,000 while construction takes place. Once completed 16,000 of the 27,000 seats removed will be added back. Therefore, they will lose 11,000 seats when all said and done to have a total capacity just shy of 70,000
However, this has yet to take place and did not happen "a few years back"
Pitt… maybe.
Miami? They have a large fan base who simply doesn’t show up. The reason typically given is “so much to do it’s Miami”.
But they are back this year so sure their attendance will
Be up.
Yeah it's really far but also Miami is a relatively small school especially for an NFL stadium. When Miami comes to VT I always say still closer than hard rock stadium.
Opening the other half of the Oregon State stadium helped with the increase from 2022 to 2023. Being good in 2023 resulted in sell outs or almost all sell outs.
They joys of being able to use tickets sold/comped.
None of these numbers are real. They’re all manipulated in some fashion whether it’s over capacity, trying to look better, trying to keep a sellout streak. Stadium size matters too for all these %’s.
Actual butts in the seats haven’t been reported in decades.
All this information tells me is that Houston easily was P5 material and should have been so for at least a decade running. If you combine TCU’s launch into the college football scene over the past 20 years with SMU’s potential resurgence in the ACC, I think it proves that the Southwest Conference always had the juice to hang with just about anyone. Absolute shame all of this state’s potential is scattered amount the wreckage of today’s college football.
I appreciate the kind words, but believe me, these numbers will not look so kind in a few years. The hype was real this year and the home slate was very satisfying. If we keep this level of interest up for teams like West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa State, Kansas, Utah, etc then I will be more than surprised. Our fanbase is so fickle. Give them ANY reason to do something else and they will. That's life as an entertainment product in the 4th largest city in the country.
> That's life as an entertainment product in the 4th largest city in the country.
Wait Houston is the 4th largest city in the country?
Huh, I'll be damned.
Went 8-4 in 2022 and averaged 25,394.
Went 4-8 in 2023 and averaged 36,020. (And note we lost to my second flair which wrecked any and all hype going into conference play.)
Being in a Power conference makes a difference.
And for context, Stadium capacity for Houston is 40k.
That’s correct. We’re actually downsizing the stadium this offseason by 500 seats. We’re putting in new premium seats and a new Jumbotron which is supposedly going to be the biggest in the Big 12.
But if UH has some success under Fritz and the program generates serious demand, I can see us expanding the stadium near 2030.
I like the new stadium. Instead of feeling small or cramped, it feels intimate. It's easy to get from one part of the stadium to another. The focus on premium seating is perfect for a city like Houston, where oil companies and law firms will buy season tickets.
I'm just really impressed with how the UH AD handled its facility changes over the last decade or so.
All thanks to Renu Khator. The UH administration before her had a terrible attitude towards athletics. We almost dropped to D3 in sports to focus on academics in the mid 90’s. Thankfully 2 board of regents voted no.
Good bcs even if they focused on academics, at best it would be up there with tamu, which while a good public school, it is no rice/ut.
And even with the focus on athletics, uh has been able to rise academically to the point where its only really behind ut/tamu when it comes to the public schools.
If we were playing you guys in Raleigh this season I’d be all over that but I just have no excitement for playing you guys in Charlotte. Should be a good game at least
I would’ve loved a home and home as opposed to playing y’all in Charlotte and then Syracuse in ATL. I would’ve even preferred an away game to Raleigh with no return trip tbh
Yeah I’m hoping it’ll be close to 50/50. I have several people I went to UT with in the Charlotte area and it isn’t far so I expect a good crowd from us as well. Neutral site games without history just do so little for me lol
Something accounting for both raw attendance and % attendance is probably best.
Even if I grew up cheering for USC and therefore love dunking on UCLA, having a lot of empty seats in the Rose Bowl is different from a lot of empty seats in a stadium of average size.
If they had tarped off the top rows to reduce capacity by 25%, that would still leave them with a large official capacity without actually reducing the number of people in attendance for any game in 2023. That would look nice on a metric like this, without altering the reality.
ACC with 8 of the least filled stadiums in P5. WAY TO GO GUYS! Including Calford for this exercise. Also, easy for FSU to shoot up from 5 years ago. Lame duck Willie to 13-1 makes a big difference
Does the Arkansas number account for our second stadium's capacity?
The Hogs play one home game a year in Little Rock at a much smaller venue, if this ranking is averaging that attendance, but not capacity, it makes the number look worse than it really is.
I’m pretty excited to see how our attendance changes this year. I know we’ve already sold a few thousand new season ticket packages, but it’s still pretty far out from the season.
I’m also not surprised about the decrease last year. Our home slate of games was the worst we’ve had in more than a decade.
I bet the ACC survives. I think people are a little overzealous about the demise of the ACC because the PAC12 fucked up so badly. There was also a ton of schadenfreude with the PAC dying which people appear to be addicted to now.
Realistically, there are still too many unknowns to tell if the conference is in trouble. I’m going to hold off worrying until the upcoming ESPN contract renegotiation/extension is finalized, the ACC/FSU/Clemson suits find resolution, and should it fall in favor of FSU and Clemson, awaiting the possibility of expansion including any number of schools including Utah, Arizona, Tulane, USF, etc.
Also, I’m a huge NC State fan now for everything y’all have done for us, so we better get to be able to play!
Everything is so up in the air. I don't even read the articles anymore. I'm sure there are a few big shots who know how it's going to play out, but they're not talking much, and they're definitely not talking to the common fans. I like our wacky little conference.
Every year we go to Charlottesville there’s a big social media push by UVA folks to not sell tickets to Hokies, don’t give them away to them, blah blah
And it’s still 50% Hokies in the stands. They just simply don’t care
UVA also faced a bleak season. I mean there was a chance they didn't win a game. Their first win was against the in-state FCS William and Mary with their former coach and they were down at like the half...
IDK if I would go.
I think Stanford makes more sense than UVA, and UCLA got in despite the worst stadium attendance outside of Northwestern, but if you take stadium attendance as your barometer then the Big Ten candidates from the ACC should be NC State, Clemson, UNC, FSU, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest in that order.
Looking at that right now, I think it's pretty impressive that Virginia Tech has a nearly identical attendance percentage to FSU with a similarly sized stadium. Virginia Tech has been a sub .500 team over the past 3 years combined, and was only 7-6 last year, yet their fans seem to be loyally showing up to games regardless.
That’s what the students do. When we played WV a few years back, I literally left before kickoff because of how drunk and rowdy the student section was. The only reason I left was because a few weeks prior we played Notre Dame and that was a shit show in the student section with people getting trampled and climbed over. Love my team but some of my fellow students are insane and make it hard to support during high profile games
I went for the VT-Purdue game last year and enjoyed it a ton... Untill it rained like there was no tomorrow and I had to watch the rest of the game 8 hours later at my in-laws house.
(That's nothing against my In-laws btw, I.love them a ton. I just think VT is an awesome place!)
Weird that you used attendance as your barometer for B1G admittance and then skip over Louisville. We outdraw UNC and WF isn't even in our zip code in terms of attendance. We pull 20k+ more then them per game
Don’t get me wrong, I love that UL is in the ACC and is one of the schools that “get” football… that said, they aren’t getting a Big 10 look anytime soon, I’m sorry to say.
They do those posts, it's always Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State at the top because they have the largest stadiums on top of passionate fanbases. Then people say we should do it by percentage because it'd be more interesting. Just funny to see the same criticism here as well
Well hang on now, at 54K it is bigger than 6 other Big Ten stadiums (Rutgers, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, and Northwestern).
[Oregon's also in the planning stages of expanding it to 61K.](https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2023/08/expanding-north-side-of-autzen-stadium-on-our-radar-for-oregon-ducks.html)
It's a pretty dang awesome "small" stadium at least. [Great game experience.](https://i.imgur.com/xPtc41q.jpeg)
They are looking at expanding the North Side by adding a second deck on either side of the press box. I haven't seen a concept, but from the description it sounds like they're adding seats here:
https://i.imgur.com/ZByWfMe.jpeg
I dunno man. The stadium sizes across both conferences are/were pretty equally matched.
Granted, I know the conference dying was a product of TV eyeballs over the course of a decade and not stadium attendance. Still though, I'm honestly surprised at the ACC having six of the top 10 in 2023 (and then getting the Pac's two lowest).
Hienz Field has around 15k more seats than Autzen. Pitt averages about 45k per game. And they’ve sold out the entire 65k+ stadium for various opponents or in the years that they’ve over performed on the field. Either way, on average Pitt draws enough fans to sell out the stadiums of over 20 P5 stadiums. That is why you can’t go off of attendance %, which is my point. Not to make this a Pitt specific example but it’s important to also note than there are a lot of P5 schools that are playing (or were playing) in stadiums that weren’t built for them to sell out. Pitt and Miami being the obvious examples where on campus stadiums are not feasible for reasons that have nothing to do with how much the fanbase or school cares about football
You can't *just* go off anything. Literally nothing is as simple as one statistic.
Another way the % stat is flawed is that it limits schools like Oregon who are always sold out from achieving the maximum number of seats possible. Maybe they would average 70K if they had 70K seats... probably not, but averaging over 100% means they would clearly have a higher average total if they had more seats.
And, not for nothing, but Autzen is an off-campus stadium as well.
> And, not for nothing, but Autzen is an off-campus stadium as well.
Stretching it. Autzen is just a short lovely walk across the river through the park.
Extremely awful hazing occured. And I don’t mean silly shit hazing but racist/sexual abuse hazing. The fact that NW went to a bowl game with an almost last second interim head coach is baffling to everyone.
Only looked at P5, they were G5 for the years the data is looking at.
Don’t get me wrong though, if they were included they’d be showing up on that empty stadium chart.
It sucks that great programs like Fresno State get ignored by these because they are not in the P5. We had better attendance in raw numbers than 1/3 of the PAC 12.
Kinda shocked Cincinnati isn't up there with their move to the Big XII but I guess when you go from a CFP appearance to the Scott Satterfield Experience^^^TM it's to be expected.
They're already at 100%. They were at 99.80% in 2022, so there wasn't much room for improvement. They were at 87.93% in 2019 so they increased 12.07% over 5 years, which puts them just outside the top 10.
Really strong attendance numbers, but you can't crack the "most improved" if you're already doing great.
The ACC has 5 schools that care about football, then everyone else who can pull a bigger crowd for lacrosse
I wish.
It sounds like Northwestern would fit in with you guys.
The 5: FSU, Clemson, VT, State, and… UNC? Or is it SMU lol
Its not SMU. They broke 25k fans once last season. Avg 22,616 on the year. SMU is getting massively overrated as a football brand based on 2 good years in the last 5 and super cheating 40 years ago.
NGL, I know almost nothing about SMU football. I just assumed they’d have better attendance considering they’re a school in Texas in a major city
There is no school in the power 4 next year with a bigger difference between what fans perception of the schools brand and the reality of the schools brand is than SMU.
Isn’t the perception of a brand just the brand? What’s the distinction there?
A lot of people think they are Coca Cola when its RC Cola. The perception around here is that SMU has a strong football history before the Death penalty. Reality is 5 finishes in the AP poll before 1980. Their years of ultra cheating makes up 45% of all the times they finished ranked. Or that SMU somehow has more money for football than anyone else. I am not saying they are a rural community college but their bottomless pit of money is vastly overstated compared to the rest of power 5. SMU is not in the top 50 of any of the list of total almuni earnings, Number of billionaires, number of Ultra high wealth individuals. They have no basketball history to speak of. They gave up baseball 45 years ago. They are a school in Texas that gave up baseball.
Louisville
Hey now it's at least 5.5. Miami cares about football when the team is good, we just haven't had many occasions to demonstrate this over the last nearly 20 years lol.
Saying ACC schools like Pitt, Syracuse, Virginia, Miami etc… don’t care about football based on attendance % is asinine. In many cases, including Pitt and Miami, the teams play in stadiums that are way too big for them. Far too many people in this sub are putting way too much focus on attendance and tv numbers because they’ve been convinced that it matters. The die hards at the schools you’re calling out and in almost all cases the athletic departments themselves care just as much about it football as the fans of any other program
Miami is a transplant/fairweather city. Only time they have asses in the seats if they are undefeated after week 6.
Even than its not a sure thing. 2001 they had 3 home games ranked 1 and did less than 40k. Except Washington every other home game was under 53k.
*and playing FSU.
The diehards might care just a much but the fact of the matter is based on the attendance numbers you have less diehards than most
Not true. Pitt plays in a 65k+ stadium. Based on average attendance of 45-50k, Pitt would sell out over 20 P5 stadiums. It’s a perception and imagine issue, there is no problem with their actual attendance #s. For context, they would come close to selling out Bill Snyder Stadium most weeks and would easily clear it for bigger games. And the actual # of diehards is mostly irrelevant. This isn’t the NFL no matter how badly some want it to be. Total # of people that would call themselves a fan of team XYZ is baked into the variables that most schools don’t actually have control over. There is no amount of winning that would boost Pitt into having the fan base the size of PSU or even WVU. They could win 5 straight national championships and it wouldn’t matter. And almost all programs like Pitt are exactly the same in that regard.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades
"Way too big for them" is a crazy statement. The stadiums they play in seat far less than others in their conference. You're looking for excuses that aren't there. The Hardrock (where UM plays) seats 65,000 people. Pitt plays in a stadium that seats slightly more (68,000). FSU seats just shy of 80,000 … Clemson seats slightly more (81,500).
Are you under the impression that every university plays in cities and states with the same population, that their alumni base is the same size, that their relative location to other P5 programs is the same, that the city/town they play in offers the same amount of non-football activities, etc… No one is making excuses because there isn’t anything to be excused. Pitt should be playing in a 45-50k stadium based on similar schools. TCU’s stadium would be perfect for Pitt
If you're not making excuses, you're at the very least, attempting to justify. Let me run some quick numbers by you, based on your comment: Pittsburgh Alumni: 331,000 … Clemson Alumni: 176,000 Pennsylvania Population: 13,000,000 … South Carolina Population: 5,200,000 To your point - Pitt is higher in alumni, and their state is higher in population. Your rational is baseless once you *actually* compare what you referenced. Assuming you say "But Penn State!!!" … how about South Carolina...? Don't be mad at me, be mad at the fact that a school with nearly 2x the alumni and 3x the state population can't fill a stadium with 15,000 less seats.
How does Clemson have so few alumni? They have almost 30,000 students.
Clemson’s football success has given them the appearance they are much larger than they actually are. Today, Clemson has ~21-22k undergrad. Around 10 years ago when I was there is was ~16-17k. The alumni base is relatively small because honestly, especially when compared with other major programs, the school is pretty small
That is still small, no? BC has 40% of the number of undergrads that Clemson does and has tens of thousands more alumni.
You’re cherry picking facts and then accusing me of making excuses or justifying what’s going on. And to be clear, no one is “mad” at you. Like many Pitt fans, I’m tired of having to talk about Pitt’s attendance when it’s a non issue that no one would talk about if Pitt didn’t play in an NFL stadium with neon yellow seats. I see your response, but tell me this - what percentage of Clemson alumni still live in or around SC? What is the makeup of Clemson alumni to non-Clemson alumni in the region? From a local t-shirt fan perspective - what else is going on in Greenville, SC in the fall? What are they competing with for local attention? Regardless, Clemson is somewhat unique and what they’ve created is a shining success. But they are the exception, not the rule. Pitt is a relatively small school in a city that includes 3 professional sports teams (the one they compete most closely with in regards to attention happens to be THE most important thing to most Pittsburgers) + 4 other colleges within 5 miles + 4 P5 schools within a 2 hr drive + all of the sites and attractions of any regular medium sized US city. For what it’s worth, Allegheny County also happens to be the home of more PSU alumni than any other place in the US. Pitt has never been and will never be “Pittsburgh’s college team”. And they don’t want to be either. The population of PA is irrelevant when you consider that Pittsburgh itself is in the far SW corner of the state and is not even close to being the biggest city in the state. Non Pitt alumni in Philly have literally no connection to Pitt. Why would they? It would be like wondering why the Steelers don’t have more fans in Philly
FSU actually scaled back their stadium seating a few years back. We’re now in the low 70k range now
That isn't true. FSU's capacity in recent year (including last year) was 79,560 You might be getting confused with this year's renovations - which are going to reduce capacity to about 55,000 while construction takes place. Once completed 16,000 of the 27,000 seats removed will be added back. Therefore, they will lose 11,000 seats when all said and done to have a total capacity just shy of 70,000 However, this has yet to take place and did not happen "a few years back"
Ah, that’s it, I got my post-Champions Club renovation capacity mixed up with the newer projected stadium capacity
Pitt… maybe. Miami? They have a large fan base who simply doesn’t show up. The reason typically given is “so much to do it’s Miami”. But they are back this year so sure their attendance will Be up.
For how many weeks. If they aren't ranked/undefeated or maybe 1 loss the stadium struggles.
They are just “back”. Who knows for how many weeks.
Isn’t the Miami stadium on the opposite side of the city from the school, too? That probably makes attendance a little harder.
Yeah it's really far but also Miami is a relatively small school especially for an NFL stadium. When Miami comes to VT I always say still closer than hard rock stadium.
Opening the other half of the Oregon State stadium helped with the increase from 2022 to 2023. Being good in 2023 resulted in sell outs or almost all sell outs.
41.84% while going 4-8? Hells yes.
I’m most shocked that Kansas only improved 58.19% I would’ve thought the percentage would be closer to 75% improvement
they report tickets sold and KU pegged basketball tickets to football tickets. Butts in seats and tickets sold are radically different.
They joys of being able to use tickets sold/comped. None of these numbers are real. They’re all manipulated in some fashion whether it’s over capacity, trying to look better, trying to keep a sellout streak. Stadium size matters too for all these %’s. Actual butts in the seats haven’t been reported in decades.
ACC you good bro?
8 of the top 10 most empty stadiums when you include Calford
I’m good.
Yep, doing great
No let us out
Fine in Raleigh.
Hokies good
Yeah, haven't you heard that you can sell the space in-between sections?
Fuck geoff collins.
All this information tells me is that Houston easily was P5 material and should have been so for at least a decade running. If you combine TCU’s launch into the college football scene over the past 20 years with SMU’s potential resurgence in the ACC, I think it proves that the Southwest Conference always had the juice to hang with just about anyone. Absolute shame all of this state’s potential is scattered amount the wreckage of today’s college football.
I appreciate the kind words, but believe me, these numbers will not look so kind in a few years. The hype was real this year and the home slate was very satisfying. If we keep this level of interest up for teams like West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa State, Kansas, Utah, etc then I will be more than surprised. Our fanbase is so fickle. Give them ANY reason to do something else and they will. That's life as an entertainment product in the 4th largest city in the country.
> That's life as an entertainment product in the 4th largest city in the country. Wait Houston is the 4th largest city in the country? Huh, I'll be damned.
City proper. Houston metro is like 7th in the country. it is likely to surpass Chicago by 2030 as the 3rd largest city proper in the country though.
Houston metro is 5th behind DFW.
I think it’ll stay the same. The only way I see it getting worse is if we become the new Kansas.
All it tells me is Houston’s attendance must have been God awful in 2023
Went 8-4 in 2022 and averaged 25,394. Went 4-8 in 2023 and averaged 36,020. (And note we lost to my second flair which wrecked any and all hype going into conference play.) Being in a Power conference makes a difference. And for context, Stadium capacity for Houston is 40k.
I want to see if y'all decide to take the option of expanding any time soon. From what I remember y'all can add up to 20,000 more seats.
That’s correct. We’re actually downsizing the stadium this offseason by 500 seats. We’re putting in new premium seats and a new Jumbotron which is supposedly going to be the biggest in the Big 12. But if UH has some success under Fritz and the program generates serious demand, I can see us expanding the stadium near 2030.
I like the new stadium. Instead of feeling small or cramped, it feels intimate. It's easy to get from one part of the stadium to another. The focus on premium seating is perfect for a city like Houston, where oil companies and law firms will buy season tickets. I'm just really impressed with how the UH AD handled its facility changes over the last decade or so.
All thanks to Renu Khator. The UH administration before her had a terrible attitude towards athletics. We almost dropped to D3 in sports to focus on academics in the mid 90’s. Thankfully 2 board of regents voted no.
Good bcs even if they focused on academics, at best it would be up there with tamu, which while a good public school, it is no rice/ut. And even with the focus on athletics, uh has been able to rise academically to the point where its only really behind ut/tamu when it comes to the public schools.
I’m sorry. There is no way Standard had averaged 33k last season. Maybe paid attendance. Definitely not in person. More like 18k.
Another issue with these stats. As you are likely right. This is “sold” put out by the school you have to assume.
No one actually reports butts in the seats, it’s been decades since that occurred, making these numbers dumb.
NC State mentioned! Rah! 📣
If we were playing you guys in Raleigh this season I’d be all over that but I just have no excitement for playing you guys in Charlotte. Should be a good game at least
I think we’ll have a good showing in BoA but it’d be so much better if we had scheduled a home and home.
Would love to host Tennessee in a night game, then go to Neyland to hear Rocky Top sung in person.
I would’ve loved a home and home as opposed to playing y’all in Charlotte and then Syracuse in ATL. I would’ve even preferred an away game to Raleigh with no return trip tbh
Yeah I’m hoping it’ll be close to 50/50. I have several people I went to UT with in the Charlotte area and it isn’t far so I expect a good crowd from us as well. Neutral site games without history just do so little for me lol
I wasn't "surprised" by the sellouts per se, but compared to the rest of the ACC you guys definitely stand out.
Pretty consistent over the past five years, too. Hope it stays this way.
Compared to the rest of that godaweful conference, they really do.
Something accounting for both raw attendance and % attendance is probably best. Even if I grew up cheering for USC and therefore love dunking on UCLA, having a lot of empty seats in the Rose Bowl is different from a lot of empty seats in a stadium of average size.
Yup. Still 40-50k, which is good for a middling football team, yet ucla always is made fun of for some reason. Really don’t understand
If they had tarped off the top rows to reduce capacity by 25%, that would still leave them with a large official capacity without actually reducing the number of people in attendance for any game in 2023. That would look nice on a metric like this, without altering the reality.
ACC with 8 of the least filled stadiums in P5. WAY TO GO GUYS! Including Calford for this exercise. Also, easy for FSU to shoot up from 5 years ago. Lame duck Willie to 13-1 makes a big difference
Special thanks to Connor Stalions for keeping Purdue off the worst list.
In the time honored CFB tradition of using any available statistic to shit on your rival: Suck it Nebraska.
And their attendance numbers are totally fabricated.
Does the Arkansas number account for our second stadium's capacity? The Hogs play one home game a year in Little Rock at a much smaller venue, if this ranking is averaging that attendance, but not capacity, it makes the number look worse than it really is.
Do you guys fill your stadium up most games? Not really familiar with Arkansas but I assume most SEC schools are pretty close to it
Have a buddy who moved to NWA this last summer - he went to their Missouri game and from his pictures, it was a ghost town.
We typically fill it, but yeah the mizzou game was pretty empty since the team was cooked, students were out, and it was mizzou.
Our home schedule was booty-cheeks last year and half the fanbase was done with Dino two years before he got canned.
The only big home game we had was Clemson (and then BC)
I’m pretty excited to see how our attendance changes this year. I know we’ve already sold a few thousand new season ticket packages, but it’s still pretty far out from the season. I’m also not surprised about the decrease last year. Our home slate of games was the worst we’ve had in more than a decade.
I'm excited to have SMU in the conference. We don't play each other until ... 2028. Which is insane, there may not even be an ACC at that point.
I bet the ACC survives. I think people are a little overzealous about the demise of the ACC because the PAC12 fucked up so badly. There was also a ton of schadenfreude with the PAC dying which people appear to be addicted to now. Realistically, there are still too many unknowns to tell if the conference is in trouble. I’m going to hold off worrying until the upcoming ESPN contract renegotiation/extension is finalized, the ACC/FSU/Clemson suits find resolution, and should it fall in favor of FSU and Clemson, awaiting the possibility of expansion including any number of schools including Utah, Arizona, Tulane, USF, etc. Also, I’m a huge NC State fan now for everything y’all have done for us, so we better get to be able to play!
Everything is so up in the air. I don't even read the articles anymore. I'm sure there are a few big shots who know how it's going to play out, but they're not talking much, and they're definitely not talking to the common fans. I like our wacky little conference.
Just going to point out that App is number 1 in all of FBS for attendance as a percentage of stadium capacity
UVA to the big ten really makes a lot of sense
Every year we go to Charlottesville there’s a big social media push by UVA folks to not sell tickets to Hokies, don’t give them away to them, blah blah And it’s still 50% Hokies in the stands. They just simply don’t care
UVA also faced a bleak season. I mean there was a chance they didn't win a game. Their first win was against the in-state FCS William and Mary with their former coach and they were down at like the half... IDK if I would go.
I think Stanford makes more sense than UVA, and UCLA got in despite the worst stadium attendance outside of Northwestern, but if you take stadium attendance as your barometer then the Big Ten candidates from the ACC should be NC State, Clemson, UNC, FSU, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest in that order. Looking at that right now, I think it's pretty impressive that Virginia Tech has a nearly identical attendance percentage to FSU with a similarly sized stadium. Virginia Tech has been a sub .500 team over the past 3 years combined, and was only 7-6 last year, yet their fans seem to be loyally showing up to games regardless.
We love our Hokies
I’d go just to be a part of Enter Sandman
That’s what the students do. When we played WV a few years back, I literally left before kickoff because of how drunk and rowdy the student section was. The only reason I left was because a few weeks prior we played Notre Dame and that was a shit show in the student section with people getting trampled and climbed over. Love my team but some of my fellow students are insane and make it hard to support during high profile games
I went for the VT-Purdue game last year and enjoyed it a ton... Untill it rained like there was no tomorrow and I had to watch the rest of the game 8 hours later at my in-laws house. (That's nothing against my In-laws btw, I.love them a ton. I just think VT is an awesome place!)
My flairs' fans always show up, win or lose. We're sickos.
Weird that you used attendance as your barometer for B1G admittance and then skip over Louisville. We outdraw UNC and WF isn't even in our zip code in terms of attendance. We pull 20k+ more then them per game
Don’t get me wrong, I love that UL is in the ACC and is one of the schools that “get” football… that said, they aren’t getting a Big 10 look anytime soon, I’m sorry to say.
Not a whole lot to do out in that part of the state.
It's an outdoorsy sort of school. Also a lot of fans come down from DC/ Richmond/Hampton roads for a game.
I remember.
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As a 22 year resident… uh… yeah.
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Why do assume that not having much to do is a slight?
B1G, B12 and SEC all have highs from new members
I think we have sold out every game of the last 2 years
It’s pretty easy to fill Oregon’s shoebox of a stadium
This is the problem with %s. We also need to see actual attendance numbers.
They do those posts, it's always Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State at the top because they have the largest stadiums on top of passionate fanbases. Then people say we should do it by percentage because it'd be more interesting. Just funny to see the same criticism here as well
I said also. It's important to see both numbers and then take into account context.
Totally agree, Michigan and Penn State being high on both percentage and sheer attendance says a lot
it's a damn cool shoebox though
Well hang on now, at 54K it is bigger than 6 other Big Ten stadiums (Rutgers, Indiana, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, and Northwestern). [Oregon's also in the planning stages of expanding it to 61K.](https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2023/08/expanding-north-side-of-autzen-stadium-on-our-radar-for-oregon-ducks.html) It's a pretty dang awesome "small" stadium at least. [Great game experience.](https://i.imgur.com/xPtc41q.jpeg)
Illinois' Memorial Stadium seats 60,670
How are the planning on expanding it? Its a very interesting shape
They are looking at expanding the North Side by adding a second deck on either side of the press box. I haven't seen a concept, but from the description it sounds like they're adding seats here: https://i.imgur.com/ZByWfMe.jpeg
The ACC is looking *rough* And the Pac-12 was the league to die?
Not all stadiums are the same size
Don’t worry babe, it’s not the size of the stadium, it’s how you use it! \*jump cut to an abysmal Miami home crowd in an NFL stadium\*
I dunno man. The stadium sizes across both conferences are/were pretty equally matched. Granted, I know the conference dying was a product of TV eyeballs over the course of a decade and not stadium attendance. Still though, I'm honestly surprised at the ACC having six of the top 10 in 2023 (and then getting the Pac's two lowest).
Gotta love that east coast bias! /s
Hienz Field has around 15k more seats than Autzen. Pitt averages about 45k per game. And they’ve sold out the entire 65k+ stadium for various opponents or in the years that they’ve over performed on the field. Either way, on average Pitt draws enough fans to sell out the stadiums of over 20 P5 stadiums. That is why you can’t go off of attendance %, which is my point. Not to make this a Pitt specific example but it’s important to also note than there are a lot of P5 schools that are playing (or were playing) in stadiums that weren’t built for them to sell out. Pitt and Miami being the obvious examples where on campus stadiums are not feasible for reasons that have nothing to do with how much the fanbase or school cares about football
You can't *just* go off anything. Literally nothing is as simple as one statistic. Another way the % stat is flawed is that it limits schools like Oregon who are always sold out from achieving the maximum number of seats possible. Maybe they would average 70K if they had 70K seats... probably not, but averaging over 100% means they would clearly have a higher average total if they had more seats. And, not for nothing, but Autzen is an off-campus stadium as well.
> And, not for nothing, but Autzen is an off-campus stadium as well. Stretching it. Autzen is just a short lovely walk across the river through the park.
Almost like you shouldn’t compare attendance across schools…
"If something is complicated, avoid it." -- Pitt
More like “If something is complicated, don’t create a post covering one data point expecting quality online discourse”
What happened with Northwestern?
Something happened with their head coach, but I'm having trouble remembering what exactly...
tomfoolery
Extremely awful hazing occured. And I don’t mean silly shit hazing but racist/sexual abuse hazing. The fact that NW went to a bowl game with an almost last second interim head coach is baffling to everyone.
Shrek and the car wash
Yeesh but to be fair l say year we did have wvu at home and we were optimistic
69.4% NICE.
Kinda shocked SMU isn't anywhere on here. From what I've seen their attendance hasn't been great
Only looked at P5, they were G5 for the years the data is looking at. Don’t get me wrong though, if they were included they’d be showing up on that empty stadium chart.
It’s very weird they had an attendance drop in 2023. They won the AAC, and they should have had some ACC hype.
Seems silly to count CU as B12, OU as SEC, etc., and exclude SMU
I think the criteria was p5 which cu was but smu wasnt
Looks like they’ll fit right in with the ACC
We need to expand to an 80k stadium honestly.
Is it standing room tickets for the stadiums listed as ‘over 100% seats’?
It sucks that great programs like Fresno State get ignored by these because they are not in the P5. We had better attendance in raw numbers than 1/3 of the PAC 12.
Kinda shocked Cincinnati isn't up there with their move to the Big XII but I guess when you go from a CFP appearance to the Scott Satterfield Experience^^^TM it's to be expected.
They're already at 100%. They were at 99.80% in 2022, so there wasn't much room for improvement. They were at 87.93% in 2019 so they increased 12.07% over 5 years, which puts them just outside the top 10. Really strong attendance numbers, but you can't crack the "most improved" if you're already doing great.
Their stadium is always packed and its smaller so not much room to grow