Lehigh Football Nation

The timing between college football games I attended at the Yale Bowl was a shade under thirty-nine years. How were both games similar? Well, in both games Yale lost.  Also, both games were played at the Yale Bowl.  In addition, there were fans at both games wanting to have a great college football experience. That's where the similarities end. Many thoughts went through my head during the game this weekend, an incredibly encouraging one for Lehigh as they are surging, on a three game winning streak going into league play after scoring a grand total of 154 points in the last three games, or, if you're scoring at home, an average of over 51 points per game. But not all the thoughts were ones about Lehigh, or Yale, or the game at hand.  Many of the thoughts I had, after staring out at the 2,196 souls that came out on an overcast, but perfectly adequate weather day to watch an extremely entertaining game, involved the fans that did not show up at one of the iconi...

If you look at the small picture, it probably looks like it's going to be a banner year for football attendance across all of the nation. In FBS, five schools (Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, and Alabama) average more than 100,000 fans thronging in their stadiums, and with a bunch of rivalry games yet to go, it looks like there might be more than ten teams that average more than 90,000 fans per game. And in FCS, too, five teams (Appalachian State, Montana, James Madison, Jackson State, and Georgia Southern) are averaging more than 20,000 fans a game.  That's already up from last year, too, where James Madison and Georgia Southern have rejoined the 20,000 club this year. Yet these individual attendance wins obscure a larger picture. For every Michigan or Appalachian State, there is another side of the coin - a college football program that is seeing attendance diminish year to year.  And there are plenty of reasons for this decline.

(Photo Credit: Colgate Connect) I talk a lot about "hating the 'Gate" during this week. On my Facebook page , I'm listing 27 reasons why I "hate the 'Gate", and it's a good-natured ribbing of Colgate from a guy who actually respects the Raiders the other 51 weeks out of the year. It's fun, it fires up the Lehigh and Colgate fans, and it gets folks to come out and see a really good football game where a pair of high-academic, solid football programs are facing off in spirited competition. Or so I hope. Attendance for non-Lafayette football events has been in serious decline over the past few years. Some of that is due to the fact that Lehigh hasn't been Patriot League champions since 2006 - and even that year, where Lafayette pounded Lehigh 49-27 and earned the autobid to the Patriot League playoffs instead, hardly felt like a championship - and it's clear that the bandwagon fans turn out for a winner in big games. But that folk...