Know announced attendance was 89K+ (ticket sells?), but was it that full? just wondering if Lagway indeed filled the stadium for a game that ordinarily might not get 75K-80K.
The attendance number includes every person who was in the stadium and seems to also include tickets sold or ways to inflate the number. The attendance was certainly higher than I had expected. I am GUESSING the stadium was roughly 75% full which would have meant approximately 70,000 people in the seats. The school did invite several hundred area high school band members who sat around the UF band and participated in the halftime show nicely. There were also an unknown number of fifth graders in attendance on a ‘field trip.’ The halftime photo shows the high school kids in orange in the Gator band in blue and idea of the folks that stayed in the stands for halftime,
I agree LakeGator. There were more people in attendance than I expected. East and West stands were decently full along with the South end zone. Touchdown Terrace never looked full but that’s been a common issue lately.
There definitely wasn’t 90k there, but it was pretty full. No huge open areas until the 3rd quarter ended, but there was room to move around the whole game. It was much more of a crowd than I was expecting, and the crowd was much more upbeat than I expected as well. May have had a little to do with secondary market pricing. Tix were cheap, cheap. Great game to take kids to, and there were a bunch of groups of kids. I ran into two or three guys I know that rarely go to games. They all had free tix and a van load of kids.
Way more than 75K there. Only the north stands were pretty sparse. I know they gave a lot of high school band members free attendance, but, Samford sold about zero of their tickets. I did not see one single Samford fan all night. I know there must have been some, but, I didn't even see any in the family section.
I saw two little girls, one wearing Samford and one wearing UF gear. They had a house divided sign too. Guessing mommy and daddy went to Samford and UF. That or one has taken on the contrarian role at age 5, lol. I did not see any other Samford fans.
It was a good crowd all things considered from the week before! Was pleasantly surprised at the game yesterday
zero traffic from Orlando and we left at 2:30 PM A room for the night in celebration was $149. That never happens.
Basically, the answer is yes. The attendance number is made up of various metrics. I have a son-in-law who was the Associate Athletic Director at USF a few years back. One of his jobs was to release the attendance number and he admits the answer is that it all depends. On what seems to vary, based on what image they want to project. The Tampa Tribune would often give him grief about the accuracy of the numbers. The number is almost always inflated but the degree seems to vary.
I was there in the North End Zone and was surprised at how many people were at the game. The official capacity of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium is 88,548, the 11th largest in the country. But I think we've had 5 or 6 games where over 90,000 were there. Last night was probably in the 75,000-78,000 range. But considering the Miami loss, who we were playing and the weather forecast up until the last day or two of a lot of rain for the game, I was impressed with how many Gators turned out.
I was there as well (in SEZ)...the top of NEZ was sparse ( that never looks full), but the West and East stands were pretty full..bottom of North and South EZ looked decently filled...Gator Walk was well attended too
So does champions club, but the majority of fans up there were in their seats during the game. Been a while since I was in touchdown terrace, can you even see the field from inside there? I seem to remember that you can’t.
I would say it's probably a somewhat obstructed view from inside. During day games, it's still pretty full inside. Not so much at night normally, but, it was really muggy Saturday since it had rained so much before the game.
