Rutgers & B1G Attendance: the bigs are big and the rest are....

Rutgers is on a bye this week. As is Iowa. Everyone else in the conference is playing conference games.

By the way, did you miss this post last week? Sorry, life got in the way.

So, in case you really were dying to know who went to the games in Week 7 (10/15), here’s a table showing what went down.

No Big Ten team won at home on the 15th. Not a very common occurrence. Especially considering there were four Homecoming games, including Rutgers’. It didn’t help the conference’s overall totals to have some of the smaller stadiums in use and less successful teams at home. It was, in fact, the smallest attendance for any week this season in the Big Ten, both in total attendance and average. More on that below.

This past week did see a rise in attendance, with another four Homecomings along with three stadiums in use with over 90,000.

Maryland still confuses me; these guys are playing pretty good football. They’re 5-2, 2-2 B1G. Yet they don’t get bigger crowds. Are they waiting for hoops?

And you have to love Minnesotans. The weather in the table is from the official box score, which is usually filled in by the home team. And to those lovable Gophers, it truly was a “perfect” day.

Attendance Trends

The opening weekend of the season was the best for the B1G, with a somewhat downward trend in total attendance each week. Of course, everyone was playing non-conference opponents and there were 12 home games.

On the other hand, average attendance has been fairly steady, with two notable exceptions in weeks four and seven when average attendance dipped considerably under 60,000. In both those weeks, the smaller capacity stadiums - including RU - were in the majority.

Through eight weeks, the Big Ten has had 4.3 million people be counted as part of its attendance, an average of 66,016 per game.

This week in the Big Ten

Six games, most of which I could probably pass on if I wasn’t intimately involved with the teams. The Wisconsin-Nebraska game should be very good, and I’m interested to see how Rutgers’ “peers” do in their matchups....for future reference. And the luster is certainly off the game in East Lansing.

Rutgers, of course, returns to action on Nov. 5 against Indiana at home.