Box score says last night's attendance for Cal Poly at UCSB was 9748. Is that the biggest so far this season?
Army/Navy annual rivalry game in Chester PA neutral site drew 8808, down a little from previous years. UCSB at Cal Poly will be in the last round of Big West Conference games Nov 2. That game has been a sellout (11075) for about a dozen years now.
Spirited fans (and the spirit is also compulsory). I mentioned that game because it shows up every year on the top-10 attendance lists.
Big West schools I kept track of this year from box scores -- UC Davis -- Total 7177, Average 797 (549 before BW and NCAA Tournaments) UCSB -- Total 26760, Average 2230 (2438 before BW and NCAA Tournaments) Cal Poly (from their stats) Total 20168, Average 2017 (not sure if that includes the two games against D2 teams). The two big games were USCB-Cal Poly home and away (see above) 20,000+ total for the two games. UC Davis reported that the 1703 attendance at the Louisville game was a school record. The stadium is rated for 1000, and they brought in temporary stands and put up standee barriers. I don't think they counted those looking in over the fence behind the south goal. The BW Final vs UCSB the week before drew 1302, which was close to the record for a week.
Tournament attendance so far (extracted from box scores) 1st Round -16 games - 14081 total - 880 average 2nd Round -16 games -19251 total -1203 average 3rd Round - 8 games - 8148 total -1019 average 4th Round - 4 games - 9061 total - 2265 average Semifinal - 2 games, 1 admission - 9862
I can assure you there were not 10,000 people there last night (I know that they count ticket sales, which include pre-sales, to inflate attendance numbers pretty much everywhere). The stadium itself seats 10k per Wikipedia, and while there were a lot of people not in seats due to not wanting wet butts, it was nowhere near capacity. I'd guess maybe 1200-1800 or so in actual attendance.
I was going to remark that I saw a lot of empty seats there, and never a sweeping camera pan of the crowd in attendance. Perhaps they came in as two shifts just to watch the game in which they held more interest and stay out of the rain duriing the other so each half-crowd looked small.
Coming in two shifts for the semis is the norm, even in good weather. Announced championship game attendance last year in Santa Barbara, with good weather but both teams (Maryland and Arkon) from far away: 4858.
I heard the announcer in the background noise say attendance is 8413 at the final. That makes 68,816 for 46 dates, 1496 average.
From a different perspective - the highest home attendance total was Clemson at 6208 over 3 games, followed by Virginia with 3949 and Georgetown with 3911. The highest average was at Marshall - 2126 in their single game against nearby West Virginia, then Clemson at 2069 (3 games) and UC Davis at 1703 (1 game). The single-home-game attendance was Stanford at Clemson in the 4th round - 3267, then West Virginia at Marshall in the 2nd round = 2126 and Washington at Georgetown in the 4th round = 2093.
Wake came in at right around 5000 (officially, 4998) for their three games, which is actually a disappointing showing. Official box lists 1765 for Maryland, 1206 for Michigan, 2027 for UCSB.
Thanks for the correction. I used a google sheets spreadsheet to work this out. I noticed this morning that it was not sorting correctly, so maybe that whacked some of the cell references. I have checked over the sum and average cells and I think it is right now -- Total home attendance - Clemson 6208 Wake Forest 4998 Georgetown 4439 Highest average attendance Marshall 2126 (1 game) Clemson 2069 (3) UC Davis 1703 (1)
One final shot - looking at last year's attendance leader UConn with 38,555 total and 3213 average. They had a down year on the field (5-12-1) and in the stands -- total over 8 games was 9258, 1157 average.
Don't think they had a field this year and they played in Hartford, 45 mins away. Pretty good numbers for playing that far off-campus.