PAC 12 Championship Attendance - 31,622

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GophersInIowa

GophersInIowa

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The announced crowd for the UCLA-Stanford championship game last night was just over 31,000. Now that is pathetic! I know the weather wasn't great, but c'mon!
 

It would be one thing if it was at a neutral site, but when you're the home team, that looks just awful. Why don't they host it a neutral site like everyone else does?
 


Herbstreit was just saying how embarrassed they should be at Stanford.
 

Hadn't they just played the week before? Also, Stanford is a women's basketball hotbed.
 


The only reason the same thing wouldn't happen at Northwestern is because B1G fans are more engaged than Pac12 fans and would find a way to get to Evanston.
 

Stanford Stadium is slightly smaller than the Bank. They averaged only 43K for the season. It was a Friday night. Stanford football is 4th behind the 49ers, the Raiders, and Cal. It's not embarrassing, it is what it is.
 

Anyone know what the ticket prices were? Seems like the conferences jack up the face value for the conference championship games.
 

Because the Gophers were not playing, I had zero interest in this game. I watched Duck Dynasty instead.
 




Yeah, it's pretty weak attendance, but Stanford's a pretty small school (~7000 undergrads, 15000 total students) and it's not as though LA and Palo Alto are right next to each other.

It's a little apples to oranges, because traveling to the Rose Bowl isn't a big time/money investment for them, but I could easily see myself skipping the B1G Championship someday in lieu of attending a potential Gopher appearance in the Rose Bowl/other BCS game. I personally just don't see the conference championships as a huge draw in situations like this (i.e host is a small school and/or has bigger fish to fry this season, neutral sites, unappealing matchups, etc). Outside of the SEC game, which basically has functioned as a BCS championship play-in every year, attendance is generally pretty weak for these games, especially when compared with the relatively high national interest.

ALso, it looks like there are going to be quite a few empty seats at Lucas Oil Stadium tonight as well, so, you know...glass houses and all that.
 

RedPoo said:
but I could easily see myself skipping the B1G Championship someday in lieu of attending a potential Gopher appearance in the Rose Bowl/other BCS game.
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Whaaaaa? The Gophers haven't won a Big Ten title in 40+ years! If we made the championship game I would do everything I could to get there, and I'm as cheap/poor as it gets.

Also, yes, it's embarrassing, and part of the reason why the Big Ten isn't even looking at private schools (sans Notre Dame) for expansion. It's just impossible to get the alumni to give a damn.
 

It's embarrassing.
For a team as good as Stanford has been recently to have a home game to go to their first Rose Bowl in over a decade its embarrassing.
There isn't a single B1G school that would have been UNDER their season average for a conference championship game at home even if it was snowing.
 



RedPoo said:
Yeah, it's pretty weak attendance, but Stanford's a pretty small school (~7000 undergrads, 15000 total students)
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They drew 13,000 more fans for a game earlier this year against Duke.

and it's not as though LA and Palo Alto are right next to each other.
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It's about the same distance as Minneapolis to Milwaukee. Not right next to each other but certainly not like going from Minneapolis to Indianapolis.

It's a little apples to oranges, because traveling to the Rose Bowl isn't a big time/money investment for them, but I could easily see myself skipping the B1G Championship someday in lieu of attending a potential Gopher appearance in the Rose Bowl/other BCS game.
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Even if the game was played at TCF?

I personally just don't see the conference championships as a huge draw in situations like this (i.e host is a small school and/or has bigger fish to fry this season, neutral sites, unappealing matchups, etc).
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Neither team has played in the Rose Bowl in over 12 years. You would think both fan bases would be extremely excited about the chance to go back there for the first time in awhile.

ALso, it looks like there are going to be quite a few empty seats at Lucas Oil Stadium tonight as well, so, you know...glass houses and all that.
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1. Lucas Oil Stadium seats a lot more than Stanford's stadium.
2. Neither team is playing at their home stadium.
3. Wisconsin fans had to travel about the same distance as UCLA had to while Nebraska had to travel over 600 miles further than Stanford.

No matter how you try and spin it, it's an embarrassment.
 

I am starting to think college football in this country is diminishing.
 




Here's the year by year average attendance for FBS over the past decade or so. One thing to note is the biggest of the bigs like Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan, et al, have more seats to sell than ever and have been selling them. It covers for major conference strugglers and the MAC/Sun Belt types that draw poorly by comparison and see a greater fluctuation depending on what happens on the field.

2001 - 44,068
2002 - 44,367
2003 - 45,447
2004 - 45,704
2005 - 46,039
2006 - 46,249
2007 - 46,962
2008 - 46,971
2009 - 46,281
2010 - 46,632
2011 - 46,074
 

There could not have been for than 40K there for the B10 game...looked like 35K or less...
 

4four4 said:
I am starting to think college football in this country is diminishing.
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Hogwash. College football has never been more popular, it's just increasingly played more and more on television.

The Big Ten added Rutgers for God's sake. It's all about television.
 

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