Bobby Hoying;1497892; said:
I took a look at average Big Ten football attendance and I was surprised at how awful it is. Yes, the top 3 are always a good draw even in some of the world's largest stadiums, but there is a huge drop off after that. After you pass Wisconsin and Iowa on the list, you find out
more than half of our conference cannot sell out their games :( Check out the first link and see how far these schools are from selling out. That's sad, we're talking about schools like Illinois, Indiana, and Minnesota who have
huge student populations. Then compare the Big Ten to the SEC which I think sells out a higher percentage of their stadiums. What's going on?
Average
Michigan 110,264 Tennessee 105,789
Penn State 108,917 Georgia 92,746
Ohio State 105,110 LSU 92,212
Wisconsin 81,747 Alabama 92,138
Iowa 70,585 Florida 90,409
Michigan State 70,540 Auburn 85,063
Purdue 59,326 South Carolina 75,630
Minnesota 51,791 Arkansas 73,895
Indiana 37,004 Kentucky 57,330
Illinois 54,872 Mississippi 53,801
Northwestern 24,589 Mississippi State 41,527
Vanderbilt 34,861
Toughest Venues: Recap | NittanyWhiteOut
Top College Football Fan Attendance Conference
If you're going to do a comparison, do it properly. Get your stats from the NCAA and compare all the BCS conferences. Also, it might be helpful if you use stats from the same season. Your SEC stats are from 2006 and Big Ten stats are from 2007. Since you're whining about sell outs and percentage of teams selling out, it would probably be better to use percent of capacity instead of average attendance. Luckily, the NCAA tracks this and lists it in an easy to read table:
http://web1.ncaa.org/mfb/2008/Internet/attendance/FBS_CAPACITY.pdf
2008 Attendance
Rank Team..........Percent of capacity
ACC
17 Wake Forest.... 100.53
20 Virginia Tech... 100.00
30 NC State...........98.41
37 UNC.................96.38
39 Clemson............95.71
42 Florida St..........94.74
45 Maryland...........93.41
48 Boston College...92.22
55 Virginia.............87.50
58 Georgia Tech.....86.34
62 Duke................84.64
99 Miami (Fla.).......61.80
Big East
15 Rutgers...........100.90
32 Connecticut......98.33
35 West Virginia.....96.81
43 Louisville..........94.48
49 Cincinnati.........91.33
74 South Florida....75.68
75 Pittsburgh........75.35
87 Syracuse.........67.56
Big Ten
4 Michigan State..103.93
7 Ohio State........102.59
10 Michigan.........102.23
13 Wisconsin.......100.95
14 Penn State.....100.91
27 Iowa...............99.41
41 Illinois.............94.93
50 Purdue............90.72
73 Minnesota........76.89
93 Indiana............64.56
100 Northwestern..60.66
Big 12
2 Nebraska.........104.94
3 Texas.............104.18
5 Oklahoma........103.61
11 Kansas..........101.31
25 Texas Tech.....99.72
29 Texas A&M......99.03
34 Colorado.........97.12
44 Missouri..........94.40
52 Kansas St.......90.38
59 Iowa St..........86.23
67 Oklahoma St....80.44
86 Baylor............68.25
Pac 10
1 Oregon...........108.23
31 Oregon St.......98.37
36 USC...............92.72
51 Arizona...........90.72
53 Arizona St.......89.03
54 Washington.....87.78
61 California........84.99
68 UCLA.............79.59
77 Wash St.........72.78
84 Stanford.........68.52
SEC
6 Kentucky........102.70
9 Florida............102.25
18 S. Carolina.....100.35
20 Georgia.........100.00
20 Alabama........100.00
24 LSU...............99.98
26 Tennessee......99.42
28 Auburn...........99.39
36 Vanderbilt.......96.70
40 Arkansas........95.47
56 Mississippi.......87.50
69 Mississippi St...78.89
The Big Ten does not look that bad to me. Minnesota should improve this year after moving into their new stadium on campus. You cannot really expect much of Indiana and Northwestern, they are who they are. Also, in 2008, the Big Ten had the highest percentage of teams averaging sell outs.
