Spring Game Attendance: Ohio State, Georgia set new records

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.

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.

Last week we explored the spring game attendance fibs of FSU, Auburn, Clemson, and Oklahoma; don’t worry, though, there were plenty of allegedly big games this weekend too.

Let’s see who was spring game naughty and who was spring game nice…

NEBRASKA

Nebraska claimed 72,992 fans, and the pictures seem to back that up.

No one on earth is as proud of how many people showed up to a scrimmage as Nebraska.

Their fans brag about it…

Their local news creates charts about it…

They bundle it with pop-country music…

They have a mythical sellout streak involved in it…

Most of all they are convinced that they are unique spring game snowflakes.

If you run into a Nebraska fan please don’t tell them that there are half a dozen other places just like Nebraska with higher spring game attendance.  Let the poor Cornhusker have this one, it’s not like they are going to get to do a lot of bragging in the fall.

OHIO STATE

The OSU claimed to have 100,189 fans at their spring game and there were certainly a lot of Buckeyes out. Was it really over 100k though?

There probably is over 90,000+ at this spring game Buckeye extravaganza, but it looks like OSU might be fudging the number just a bit. There are some fair sized areas of gray in most of the pictures from yesterday.  OSU’s stadium holds 104,000, so it would have to be almost completely packed with very few empty seats.

OSU probably only fudged their number a little bit, and they probably did it because Urban Meyer called for 100,000 to show up and then they felt trapped.

This is the same thing that happened to Clemson and Dabo; perhaps coaches should just stop demanding certain numbers of fans for spring scrimmages?

There was one really important thing that happened at Ohio State’s spring game, though…

Still OSU clearly won the spring game attendance championship, well done indeed.

GEORGIA

Some 93,000 fans showed up in Athens to see

the start of Mark Richt’s 16th rebuilding season

the start of new UGA head coach Kirby Smart’s first season with the Bulldogs.

Most importantly, though, UGA got the support of Ludacris.

Really it’s not the number of people at your spring scrimmage, but the support of Luda that counts.

ALABAMA

Alabama claimed 76,212 at their spring game, that’s kind of down for the mighty Tide.

Also in another shocking turn of events, the Alabama defense appears to be better than the Alabama offense.

Time to crank out those “The Dynasty is Dead” articles based on a spring game, get those clicks son! Surely writing about how Alabama’s doom based on a spring game won’t come back to bite you.

Defense and missed kicks, that sounds like Alabama Football.

Tennessee

The Vols claimed 67,027 as their spring game attendance this year.

That means the Vols should have had their third best spring game attendance in history.  The Vols clearly beat last year’s attendance of 63,016 right?

Here are some pictures from this year…

"Greatest in college football Neyland Stadium"

And this is last year…

If that’s 67,000 people then Neyland Stadium must have been expanded to hold 120,000! WOW!

BOSTON COLLEGE

Dozens of Boston College fans got a spring game treat…

That’s right, Boston College won a game!

We hope you enjoyed our spring game attendance report and please try to remember this one thing… SPRING GAMES DON’T MATTER!