Rutgers & B1G Attendance: a long way to go

We all understand: attendance is tickets sold, not fans in the seats.

We also all know that Rutgers fans are still a long way away from being truly considered "die hard".  How many of you know someone who had tickets for this game and sold them in order to recoup some money?  It's still a bandwagon, front runner mentality.  Which, as several commenters have noted, is very typical of the New York metro area.  And that's sad for Rutgers....and the Mets....and the Islanders....and the Nets....

Rutgers reported a sellout several days before the game.  The reported attendance was 53,111 and there was a big push to get people in their seats well before kickoff.  Yet this was the scene about ten minutes before the 8:13 kickoff.

It got even uglier once the rout was established as the RU "faithful" decided drinking and beating traffic was better than watching the wheels come off inside The Birthplace.  Witness the student section in the fourth quarter:

When the scoreboard hit triple zero,most of the people left inside the stadium were  chanting O-H-I-O, and there were a good number of them.

"It felt like a home game for us." - #Buckeyes Michael Thomas on playing at #RFootball, by @njhoopshaven https://t.co/PkObTB2Mvh #CHOPNation

— Ryan Dunleavy (@rydunleavy) October 25, 2015

The secondary market

As for making money on tickets, the market was definitely there for the game.  A look at Stub Hub on Friday, showed pretty good markups on tickets in all areas of the stadium.  This was pricing at the low end of the price spectrum:

And that was for the cheapest seats available.  On Friday, the high end for OSU tickets was as high as $570.  Compare that to the lowest pricing on the current secondary market for the Maryland game on November 28, two days after Thanksgiving:

That, my friends, is just sad, sad, sad.

So, who showed up?

There were five games in the conference over the weekend, with Nebraska and Michigan State being the largest buildings.  Maryland played PSU at M & T Bank Stadium in Baltimore and drew a crowd that was 28,000 larger than their previous average attendance in College Park.  Personally, I'm glad we had the Nitts come to Piscataway.  Had we gone to MetLife Stadium, you know what would have happened.

Here's the week's attendance in order of % capacity.  Yay, us!

Week 8 10/24
School	Attendance	Capacity	% Capacity	Result	Notes
Rutgers	53,111	52454	101.25	L OSU
Michigan State	74,144	75005	98.85	W Indiana
Nebraska	89,493	92000	97.28	L Northwestern
Maryland	68,948	71,008	97.10	L PSU	Neutral Site
Illinois	45,438	65000	69.90	L Wisconsin	Homecoming

So, how do we feel better about this?  Schadenfreude!

Helloooooo, Syracuse.

Pitt was 5-1, first place in the Coastal Division of the ACC.  Sounds like a pretty attractive opponent coming to the blimp hanger.  The resulting crowd?  Just over 60% capacity.

Take out the LSU game and the Orange's average attendance drops under 30,000.  Meanwhile, Rutgers continues to get over 90% capacity, averaging 48,722 per home game.  We are pleased.