College football: What could 2019 attendance tell us about 2020?
By John Scimeca
No matter how you slice it, stadiums for this fall’s college football season will look different. What can 2019 figures tell us about 2020?
Before we dive into 2019’s college football attendance figures, there are a couple caveats.
Yes, there are some discrepancies with individual schools in how numbers are reported. By school and conference, there can be differing measures between “butts in the seats” (people actually passing through the stadium turnstiles) versus tickets sold for a game.
There are also various ways to configure fan capacity for certain games, thus the “standing room only” predicament that comes up with stadium attendance figures.
But overall, we should look at these 2019 NCAA football attendance numbers with a wistful look, or perhaps even in tear in our eyes.
Due to this year’s COVID-19 outbreak and its continued effects through late summer, we are virtually guaranteed a drastically different college football season — and the fans are just one part of that equation. Though the most pessimistic may predict a cancelled or postponed football season, there’s reason to believe the universities, administrators, and coaches will do whatever possible to make football happen.
If you can socially distance while tailgating (hey, it could happen, right?), couldn’t some semblance of a game day atmosphere happen in 2020? School officials have a bevy of options to consider, including quarter-capacity or half-capacity seating with structured “traffic flow” in the stadium concourses for concessions and restrooms.
With these considerations in mind, let’s see which 2019 attendance figures can inform us the most about the upcoming 2020 football season.