Whether playing in Tiger Stadium or on the road, the LSU football team packed stadiums last season.
According to new statistics from the NCAA, LSU’s 13 games last season drew a total of 1,195,540 fans—third best among all college teams, trailing just Ohio State (approximately 1.3 million in attendance) and Alabama (1.27 million).
However, Ohio State—which won the national championship—played in 15 games, and Alabama played in 14. LSU had the highest overall attendance of all teams that played just 13 games last year, narrowly edging out total attendance for Texas A&M and Tennessee, each of which had roughly 1.12 million over 13 games.
About $87 million was spent to add an upper deck to Tiger Stadium’s south end zone prior to the opening of last season. The project sent capacity to above 102,000 inside the stadium, and the NCAA figures show fans filled up the seats.
LSU ranked No. 4 among all college football teams last season for average home attendance, at a 101,723 average over seven home games. Ohio State was also No. 1 for average home attendance, at 106,296, followed by Texas A&M (which also expanded its stadium prior to the start of last season) at 105,123, and Michigan at 104,909.
And while the figures show last season was a record year for attendance among Southeastern Conference schools—with the 100 games drawing an average of 77,694 fans per game, up 2,020 from the season previous—the conference’s gains weren’t enough to offset attendance losses in many other conferences.
As ESPN reports, the top tier of college football teams had their worst average attendance this past season since the NCAA began compiling Division I-A—now FBS—averages in 2003. Average attendance at games in 2014 was 44,603 fans, a drop of 2.3%, or more than 1,000 fans per game from the previous season.
See the complete NCAA football attendance statistics.
—Steve Sanoski
