Spring Game Attendance Report: Who had biggest crowd?

Spring game attendance doesn’t matter, and that’s why it’s so funny when universities lie about it.

Spring games are fun, it’s great to spend a lovely spring day enjoying your chosen college football team.  Getting to know the new players on your team and catching a small glimpse of what kind of offense or defense might be run next year is outstanding.

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What you can’t get from a spring football scrimmage is any real sense of how a team will perform next season. It’s still the spring, and getting over excited, or super depressed, about how a team does in one spring scrimmage is downright ridiculous; not that it stops fans and talking heads from bragging and bloviating about the amazing or damning things they saw in that hot spring game action.

Bragging or getting upset about a spring game is silly, but bragging about spring game attendance numbers is even sillier. Bragging about spring game attendance numbers is the even more pointless version of tweeting at recruits.  You’re not impressing anyone, you’re just letting the world know exactly what kind of troglodyte football fan you are.

It’s even more fun with the universities themselves lie about how many people attended their spring game, like no one in the world has a camera on their phone. Sometimes huge universities are insecure thirteen year old girls, let’s laugh at them about it.

TEXAS A&M

The Aggies had a fine turnout of 27,412 and the pictures seem to agree with that assessment. Texas A&M must be serious about that honor code.

Well done 12th man, now spend the rest of the offseason coming up with an adorable nickname for Trevor Knight.

CLEMSON

Clemson is a favorite to win it all next year AND has killer pizza parties, which makes this spring game attendance lie even funnier. Clemson announced an attendance of 50,500 fans for their spring game, which is super convenient since Dabo begged for over 50,000 fans to show up.

There’s no doubt that a whole lot of excited Clemson fans showed up to the Clemson spring game, we’re just not sure it was 50,500 fans.  It’s close, but there are only fans in the bottom sections of the stadium, and those fans certainly aren’t packed in shoulder to shoulder.  When Clemson’s stadium is completely full it holds around 81,000 fans, so to get 50,500 about 62 percent of the stadium would have to be filled.  Does it look like 62 percent of Clemson’s stadium was full to you?

Clemson probably had 40,000 plus some odd fans show up, and was a bit embarrassed that they called for 50,000. The lesson here is probably that you shouldn’t set attendance goals on spring games that absolutely don’t matter. It also would have been way funnier if they had claimed 50,001.

FLORIDA STATE

Florida State held their spring game in Orlando at the Citrus Bowl, and we bet Jim Harbaugh is kicking himself for not thinking of that. FSU claims 49,913 fans attended their spring scrimmage in Mickey’s backyard.

The Citrus Bowl holds 65,000 fans, FSU is claiming 49,913 fans attended their spring game.  That means 76% of the Citrus Bowl needed to be full.  Does is look like 76% of the Citrus Bowl was full? The icing on this cake is that FSU fans are really super proud of their spring game attendance and the fact that it’s more than Miami’s regular season attendance. No word yet on Houston’s spring game attendance.

AUBURN

The Auburn Tigers admitted that there was a drop in their spring game turn out claiming 45,723 fans in attendance. That’s a 17,000 fan drop off from last year when they were ready to crown themselves the national champions.

Auburn’s 45,723 fan claim is probably close to the mark, they do charge admission to the Auburn spring game, so they should have a fairly accurate count system.

The amusing part of Auburn’s spring game was the Auburn fan reactions to it.

Probably shouldn’t bet on a Gus Malzahn defense being good.

This also happened at Auburn yesterday.

What’s tackier than a post game proposal? A post-spring game proposal of course! What are the chances that their wedding vows include a “War Eagle!” and an SEC chant?

Auburn fans should probably take a deep breath. It was silly to claim that you were championship caliber after last year’s spring game, and it’s silly to claim that the sky is falling this year.

MICHIGAN

Michigan held their game back on April Fools Day, but we will include it in this batch. Michigan sits on top of the spring game heap right now with a claimed 60,000 fans in attendance.

That’s a Michigan reporter being skeptical of the 60,000 fan claim.

OKLAHOMA

Will Oklahoma be able to keep their Big 12 spring game attendance title or will no one care? STAY TUNED!

There were a few other spring games this weekend, Air Force had 300 fans come out, but these were the most fun this week.

More saturday blitz: Best College Football Player Born in Each State

Be sure to come back next week as we check up on Alabama, Notre Dame, Tennessee, and the always popular Boston College. Until then try to remember this one thing… SPRING GAMES DON’T MATTER!