Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I think the number of people who follow, but at a shallower level, is higher.

I used to go to Super Bowl parties decades in the past on occasion.  I was always a bit surprised at how few people bothered to watch more than a couple of minutes of the actual game.  They were parties with some football going on in the background.  This includes a couple times where the Bengals were playing.

So, yes, more eyeballs today with a much shallower level of interest unless they had bets on it.

Not sure about that, it has been dropping among students pretty steadily for a while.  They just aren't as engaged in college athletics, or really even a lot of the other traditional hobbies and entertainment interests, as previous generations.

But degenerate gamblers are at least turning on TV sets so the powers that be see no need to make any changes.

student sections don't fill the stadiums out though- most of the large 70k-100k college football stadiums have student sections that range from 10-20k. the people that are filling those stadiums are big money donors, alums, and average joe fan.

At the start of the 2023 football season, college football ticket sales rose 42 percent, according to Forbes. Consequently, the ticket prices — especially from second or third-party vendors — soared to new heights.


The average Big Ten ticket price in 2024 was about $73, with the highest being $225 for Northwestern games. Average ticket prices for NFL games were comparatively lower, at around $120.

source: link

I was asked why I don't attend more baseball games in person (this year aside).  I go to one a year, it's for me not a great experience.  I expect to watch the game, and instead what I see is a lot of music and interinning "events" and constant flashing of big screens showing information of dubious value for the fan and hot dogs nearly $10.

I watch at home in considerable comfort on a rather dated 65" TV and can change channels at will and mute commercials.

student sections don't fill the stadiums out though- most of the large 70k-100k college football stadiums have student sections that range from 10-20k. the people that are filling those stadiums are big money donors, alums, and average joe fan.

I'm not saying the students fill the stadiums, I'm saying their attendance is declining.  The danger there, is that college football isn't creating new, eager fans at the rate it did decades ago, and it's a feedback loop that will only accelerate, perhaps exponentially, eventually.

The lack of new fans will ultimately result in declining overall interest in general, and will almost certainly result in acute lack of new donors for major universities, in the coming generations.  As the old donors die off and aren't replaced, the athletics departments will inevitably suffer.

The smart ones know this, which is why they've gone to great lengths to enhance the fan experience for younger audiences with improved wifi and other targeted maneuvers.  But overall I don't expect it will make much difference.  The kids these days just aren't into the same things that we've been into, historically. Which is fine, that's nothing new, but it does put college athletics in a pickle.

My millennial nephew watches pretty much every NFL game plus Redzone, but only because of his fantasy football teams.  He really has no interest in the outcomes of the games at all.

It's still a style of fanship, but it's very different than my experience.

My kids like football, but they like players, more than teams.  College sports, particularly football were never driven by the stars, because of limited eligibility.  But with the transfer portal it's even less.

So they both prefer the NFL, but not as much the results as much as, oh Saquan Barkely is playing, or it's Lamar Jackson vs. Josh Allen, etc.  Kind of what the NBA has been for a generation

I suspect we mostly agree CFB will have a higher number of "fans" who are not very fanatic relatively speaking about a given team.

Yeah I don't think many people become major fans of the university where they do post-graduate work.  Maybe mildly interested but not a fanatic in the same way we tend to be for our undergrad alma mater.

I of course did both at the same school, but in my MBA class everyone had their undergrads from all over.  My original assigned study group had undergrads from UCLA, Tufts, Stanford, Duke, and Missouri.  They enjoyed going to UT sporting events but they certainly never became big Longhorn fans.

I've been to 2 Pitt basketball games and a Pitt soccer game in the 19 years I've lived here