There was a fairly entertaining game yesterday, featuring ACC powerhouse Stanford hosting Hawai’i. I enjoyed watching it, as well as the 274 fans in attendance, too.
Oh, that wasn’t the only place. Lincoln Riley and the greatest show on Earth came out to a similar crowd at home.
Is this a sign of a waning national interest in college football, or is this just a California thing?
I also heard it was hot.
It’ll be 96 in Athens this coming weekend and I can assure you all that Sanford will be close to capacity, and “it’s hot and humid” may be the reason why folks opt to leave at halftime, but it won’t look anything like this.
Just remember the ACC and the B1G opted to expand to California for improved media reach and competition, and they’re truly getting neither.
Haven’t they ever heard of blue tarps?
NC State-Va was only 1/4 full Dublin only game close to full
It’s definitely been a distracting offseason, but USC has the most fair-weather fans in the state and Stanford is horrible. Also, I can confirm that the CA sun is very strong and is better consumed near the large body of water nearby.
Californians are not college football fans. They like their local high school football and then it’s professional sports. Does the Coliseum fill up when USC is good? Yes, but that’s to see the USC celebrities on the sidelines, who show up only when the Trojans are good. UCLA in the Rose Bowl is embarrassing … I’m convinced they agreed to cancel the series with us because they knew what we would do to take over Pasadena. Cal is a joke … they had a future Heisman winner and didn’t do squat.
Stanford sucks now. If any school should have prospered in the NIL era, it should have been the Tree with all of their entrepreneurs, doctors and business moguls (including Tiger Woods) showering athletes with dollars (IIRC Tiger’s son is committed currently to Florida State). Maybe when you see the Stanford campus (beautiful), you would understand why.
As the cost of living in California continues to rise forcing people to vote with their feet, this problem is going to get worse. The changing demographics of California is going to kill the sport in the state.
California has 33 million people and that scale affects people’s perceptions. I did a little research a couple of years ago. California has more colleges fielding football teams than any other state by far. Obviously those teams have spectators our they would no longer field teams. The size of the State affects perceptions. A Southern Cal alum living in Sacramento has a long way to travel to attend but can attend a number of college games close by.
Those photos don’t look good for Stanford or SC but we have seen pictures of half full Bobby Dodd Stadium. It would be a mistake for Big Ten fans to post those pictures and comment that Georgians don’t like football.
California has so many people that there are a lot of people in the State that like any activity you could name.
I’m going off some eyewitness accounts. I had a work colleague who spent 5 years in the Bay Area leading a big team. On fall Mondays, he would ask people about watching CFB. To a person they would be interested in the Giants, 49ers and Warriors and could care less about their college teams. He would call me to talk CFB.
Week zero is the equivalent of dropping the canary into the coal mine. How far can they push fan interest? Yesterday was a success for TV in need of content and Vegas but not much else. Let’s see how the court cases (oh…they are coming) play out this week to further alienate fan interest.
NASCAR ran at Daytona last night (to a less than capacity crowd) only to determine 16 drivers by points who will still race among 40 cars for 8 more weeks that includes some boring non-traditional tracks. The PGA wraps up the season today in a limited field shootout that will likely crown a winner who was not necessarily the “best” all season and have already announced a serious revamp to their playoff model. More ain’t always better but that’s what the leaders keep thinking.
The Tour Championship change a couple of years ago made me think who thought this was a good idea. I didn’t like multiple years where the result of the playoff was decided very early. I also didn’t like when they handicapped the field but gave the leader such a head start that it removed much drama. I like the proposed change for 2028, but match play is so fickle that it’s hard to assess whether that works either.
On week 0, I watched the last quarter of the FSU game while looking my phone and listened to a bit of UNC-TCU on the way home from the golf course. I fear that’s going to be my Saturdays in the not-so-distant future.
Having lived as a child and young teen within a few miles of the East Lake Country Club the current TPC has meaning to me. I get that the Tour has more to think about than Gaskilldawg’s nostalgia, though.
Oh, I love ELCC. I would love to have an opportunity to play it. I’m talking more about the format of the Tour Championship than the course. I do hope the powers that be replace the Tour Championship with a regular Atlanta tour stop at the top level of the Tour and keep East Lake in the Tour Championship rotation.
EE, I got to play East Lake twice back when I was the Superintendent at Tom Cousin’s Nomani Plantation. This was before they reversed the nines. Second time I played it I started out Par, Par. Then I hit my drive on #3 out in the street and it was downhill from there. Beautiful course, but it was a BEAST to a casual golfer like myself. 🤕
Funny video from Nonami Plantation ⬇️
I think it is a sign that the “week 0” creation of ESPN/Disney is a bad idea.
Based on some of the pricing on Stub Hub, the fact that UGA has offered tickets to W,Ky. at lower than face and the general Dumpster Fire of college football administration I think it is fair to say that college football interest for live action vs. TV is definitely waning. How the athletic departments and bowl / playoff committees approach ticket pricing will be critical to retain many fans. Just IMHO………..
Aladawg
The thing is, for me at least, it’s tv that has ruined the live action. I still go to some games but just having to sit there through all the play stoppages is ridiculous. I sometimes wonder why they even focus on conditioning when you get a 3 minute break seemingly every 5 plays.
I feel like the schedule this week and next week is basically the networks saying “let’s see if they’ll eat this plate of steaming crap.” I was at a wake yesterday and somebody put the UNC/TCU game on, but honestly the wake was more interesting. My wife kept asking if the TV was paused, as the score was 15-10 forever and nothing was happening.
I looked at the USC v SJSU Gamecast on ESPN.com. The announced attendance was over 51,000. The video highlights did not show the crowd but the crowd noise looked a lot louder than what it would be if the crowd through was as shown in the picture. Makes me wonder at what time the picture was taken.
I think a mitigating factor here is that California schools are still on the quarter system. Move-in day for students is in mid-September and many of them are probably still away on internships or summer jobs. Week Zero is still a terrible idea, but the low attendance here can’t simply be blamed on the notion that California schools are effete institutions that hate college football.
To be fair, Women’s volleyball and soccer probably pulled thousands away from the Stanford football game. To be honest the crowd makes the tiny footprint stadiums of Wake Forest, Duke and the nats look like overflowing hordes on their game day. To be real The Stanford crowd made Boson College look like the Stanford of the East.
Nothing will top the lectures we’ll get that there’s more important things to do than watch football. Yeah, because Dove Season is opening and there’s plenty of places to fish. There’s plenty more to do in the Classic City instead of watching us whip Tennessee’s arse (and 15 more) that the Dorks in Palo Alto and South Central have combined. Straight loserism going on there SAD
WOW! Clay Matvick, Rocky Boiman and Laura Stickells calling the came for ESPNltqb+? I might actually go to the dayum game and fry in the stadium, instead. Well played Worldwide leader, well played!