FBS Attendance Requirement - Why Isn't the NCAA Enforcing It?

[Mr. SWAC]

Teams aren’t hitting the NCAA attendance requirement and nobody seems to care​

You may not realize this, but officially, the NCAA requires an average attendance of 15,000 fans per game once every two years to maintain FBS status. If you miss that benchmark, you’re technically at risk of getting booted.

Anybody who has been to a lower level G5 game, or scans Twitter on a fall Saturday, knows there are plenty of programs that don’t average 15,000 a game. According to the official NCAA stats, 14 different programs reported average attendance below 15,000. If you go by scanned tickets, that number is closer to 30, at least looking at data from 2017, thanks to the WSJ.

https://extrapoints.substack.com/p/the-ncaas-attendance-requirement
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Spinnoff of the "SWAC as FBS" thread. A lot has been made over being able to meet the 15K attendance threshold, but I knew from the 2019 attendance figures that i had that a few teams failed to meet this mark. I was more surprised to see that three schools in particular (Ball St., Massachusetts, and No. Illinois) all averaged under 10K in attendance last year. Looking back over the last 5 years, none have ever met the 15K threshold. So I decided to take a look at how many teams have been falling short, and see who the NCAA had put on notice? Short answer; there aren't any. But why not? I eventually came across this article from last year and found it a good read.

Is the SWAC and the rest of FCS relegating ourselves out of the national spotlight and bowl games, because other than the 85 scholarship limit the NCAA isn't enforcing crap.

 

[JROCK]

Just taking a cursory glance, the question I would have is whether advance paid attendance (not turnstile) is counted in those numbers (I believe that may be a soft spot in the rules but could be wrong). I went to the bottom of the WSJ (as a habit looking for different sources used) list and there was a bunch of different rationales for flawed numbers.....interesting never the less.

 

[In_The_662]

I think it was around the time Howard Schnellenberger took FAU to FBS that I knew that the attendance requirement (then 18K) was loosely enforced (and even that is being modest). All you have to do is take a look at a MAC and Sun Belt mid-week game (pre-COVID) and see that

A handful of SWAC schools can hit it and we should want at least half full stadiums for all our games but the NCAA has shown that they really don't care

 

[ghostwriter]

who is really telling the truth? The number is what's being "guesstimated" by someone or told by a higher up to inflate attendance anyway

 

[major095]

I think it was around the time Howard Schnellenberger took FAU to FBS that I knew that the attendance requirement (then 18K) was loosely enforced (and even that is being modest). All you have to do is take a look at a MAC and Sun Belt mid-week game (pre-COVID) and see that

A handful of SWAC schools can hit it and we should want at least half full stadiums for all our games but the NCAA has shown that they really don't care

Oh, they'll care once we show up at the door.

 

[DAHILL]

They cant until there is a universal way of reporting attendance. Not one school in the SWAC counts attendance the same... and this was told to me by a former SWAC SID. Some count students... others dont... some count season tickets... some dont.... some count only purchased tickets while others count anyone who goes through a turnstile...

 

[tierre]

I do think it needs to be a universal way. Everyone needs a ticket even if it’s scanned through your phone.