Jackson State, Montana, Montana State, Tarleton, South Dakota State, Alabama State, Southern and Delaware outdraw several G5 schools and have a fanbase that would translate to FBS.
And yes, I know Delaware is going to be FBS next season.
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Tarleton did great during the year but had only 3583 fans for its playoff game vs. Drake on 11/30. It was Thanksgiving Day weekend (Sat.) so maybe Tarleton did something to draw of lot of students and sell cheap tickets during the year. That big of a drop-off for a playoff game is rather suspect.
Intersting. They have pretty well-off alumni who like to donate, so I bet they ate a lot of tickets to inflate numbers here and there.
Since they had some nice crowds from what I saw, I think what you mentioned about free/heavily discounted tickets definitely is the main factor. That said, I’m sure doing this allowed them to pick up a few new fans.
Plus what else is there to do in a hick town like Stephenville anyway?
These schools have always had great attendance
Same is true for a hick town like Nacogdoches but SFA doesn’t draw very well. I grew up in Lufkin so Nac-a-nowhere jokes are fair game. Weekend retail work, go home, go to the gym, watch Netflix, go to Walmart…
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For those who do not follow or pay attention to FCS, there is no comparison to the SWAC to Southland.
SWAC schools have large followings. Southland does not.
When SWAC schools play football games against other HBCU schools in what are called “Classics” routine attendance is 40,000 plus, with some 50-60 thousand.
And the SWAC media days have a large contingent with all the radio, TV folks, print media and bloggers from Texas, La., Miss., Alabama, Florida and Arkansas.
Just a small splattering of media attend Southland media days.
I’ve been to both conference’s media days.
SWAC football is big time in FCS.
Even when Sam Houston when they were contending for national titles in FCS, average attendance was less than 10,000.
Yeah, from what I understand Tarleton State has a couple of relatively wealthy alumni that basically just up and decided they were going to move from D2 to FBS, and now they’re likely on the shortlist for C-USA.
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