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Sports Illustrated: Unexcused Absence: Why Is College Football Attendance Tanking?
As college football prepares to crown its latest champion, the game is facing a much bigger question than Clemson or LSU: namely, why are crowds at stadiums across the country shrinking? University administrators have tried fix after fix—but without ever diagnosing a root cause beyond 'kids these days.' To get to the heart of the problem, we set out on a journey across the college football landscape.
As college football prepares to crown its latest champion, the game is facing a much bigger question than Clemson or LSU: namely, why are crowds at stadiums across the country shrinking? University administrators have tried fix after fix—but without ever diagnosing a root cause beyond 'kids these days.' To get to the heart of the problem, we set out on a journey across the college football landscape.
Florida isn’t alone—and plenty other schools have it much worse. From 2014 to ’18, attendance across the FBS fell by 7.6%. Last year, on average, 41,856 fans went to games. That’s the lowest turnout since 1996; even major programs like Ohio State, Virginia Tech and Ole Miss suffered declines of greater than 5%. The NCAA has yet to release its full report on 2019’s numbers, but pictures of nearly-empty stadiums, from big to small programs, popped up every fall weekend on Twitter. During bowl season, as games moved to neutral sites, the stands were so empty it looked more like spring football. Even athletic directors will openly admit it: College football is facing an attendance crisis.
I want to find out—and tease apart the reasons for all the empty seats—which is why I’m sitting alone in Florida’s student section on a lovely November day during a blowout of Vanderbilt. I’m starting here in Gainesville, in hopes of understanding why a resurgent program in the SEC—the SEC!—is struggling to fill its stadium. Then I’ll visit Clemson, where the Tigers didn’t sell out a single game during last season’s perfect championship campaign and did so only three times this season, despite another undefeated run to the title game. Last, I’ll head to the Horseshoe to watch Ohio State face Penn State in a classic late-season Big Ten showdown. If the stock market fell as abruptly as Buckeyes’ student season ticket sales did this year, we’d be in a massive recession.