2019 college football attendance leaders
(school — average reported attendance per game)
- Michigan — 111,459
- Penn St. — 105,678
- Ohio St. — 103,383
- Texas A&M — 101,608
- Alabama — 101,117
- LSU — 100,842
- Texas — 96,308
- Georgia — 92,817
- Nebraska — 89,348
- Tennessee — 87,864
- Auburn — 85,785
- Florida — 84,684
- Oklahoma — 83,256
- Clemson — 80,868
- South Carolina — 77,962
- Wisconsin — 76,472
- Notre Dame — 76,288
- Washington — 68,238
- Michigan State — 67,819
- Iowa — 65,557
- Iowa State — 59,587
- BYU — 59,547
- Southern California — 59,538
- Virginia Tech — 58,293
- NC State — 56,466
According to the NCAA’s 2019 football attendance statistics
Eleven schools from the list above did not finish in the 2019 AP Top 25 final poll: Texas A&M, Nebraska, Tennessee, South Carolina, Washington, Michigan State, Iowa State, BYU, USC, Virginia Tech and NC State. Cornhuskers fans deserve plenty of credit, as nearly 90,000 of them attended each home game during a 5-7 season that included a 48-7 loss to Ohio State and a loss to Indiana (both at home).
Most well-attended yet non-ranked team was Texas A&M, who received 54 votes and was thus ironically one spot away from the AP Top 25 (No. 25 Texas received 69 votes) while pulling in the fourth-most fans in 2019 at more than 101,000.
Oregon was the highest-ranked team to not be included in the Top 25 of attendance after finishing No. 5 in the AP poll while only drawing an average of 53,591 fans, almost 3,000 less than 25th-best NC State (56,466).
On an interesting geographical note, 16 of the 25 best-attended programs are in states with populations less than nine million people, in other words, not in among the nation’s 10 most populous states. Led by Alabama and LSU, in states of 4.9 and 4.6 million people, respectively, many programs draw well in states with relatively low populations.
While the sunny states of California, Texas, and Florida contain more than a quarter of all Americans (more than 90 million people combined), they only account for four schools among the nation’s highest in-game attendance — Texas A&M, Texas, Florida and USC. These states, of course, are home to many smaller Division I and lower-tier college football programs. Iowa (3.1 million people) is the state with the smallest population to crack this Top 25 list; doing so with two programs in both Iowa and Iowa State.
By conferences, the Big Ten claims the top three spots and has seven of the 25 most well-attended teams. The SEC counts nine of these top 25 teams, all of which are located in the top 15. Of the remaining nine programs in the 25 most well-attended teams, three are from the Big 12 (Texas, OU, and Iowa State), three are from the ACC (Clemson, Virginia Tech and NC State), two are Independents (Notre Dame and BYU), and two are from the Pac-12 (Washington and USC).
The highest attendance from a Group of Five program was Central Florida, which drew 43,788 fans per game. If you count BYU as a non-Power Five school, then it’s the Cougars, who rank No. 22 on the list with nearly 60,000 fans per game. The Knights drew more fans than several power conference schools, such as the Big 12’s TCU (42,881), the Big Ten’s Indiana (41,244), the Pac-12’s Arizona (39,532), and the ACC’s Duke (25,811).
This list of 2019 attendance figures could present a picture of potential lost revenue in 2020 for these programs. Or, it could indirectly indicate which schools are best positioned to bring in fans at comfortable social distancing arrangements.
So, with these numbers in mind, which schools have the biggest stadiums and presumably the most amount of space to work with for the fall of 2020?