Dec 13 / Rob

JMU Outdraws A Lot of Crappy FBS Teams

The NCAA released its final attendance figures for the 2011 college football season last Saturday. Like most things associated with NCAA bookkeeping, the numbers are a little suspect. Actually, they are flat out inflated. Accounting hijinks aside, JMU  had the second highest official average attendance in FCS, finishing just behind Appalachian State. In fact, JMU’s average attendance of 25,002 was good enough to outdraw 46 FBS teams, including such traditional powers such as Duke, UNLV, Rice, and SMU. Of course by traditional powers, I actually mean recognizable schools that have terrible fan support.

Other fun facts and miscellaneous notes:

  • JMU had a higher average attendance than all but one MAC school.
  • MAC football sucks
  • JMU drew 102% of capacity and App State drew 130%. Me thinks capacity is a made up number.
  • Eastern Kentucky finished a mere 71 spots behind JMU.
  • There seem to be a lot of directional universities on the FCS list.
  • The MAC is the exception to the above. That conference is a directional school hotbed.
  • 3 of the 4 remaining schools in the FCS playoffs finished in the top 11 for attendance.
  • JMU and Yale were the only schools in the top 10 with fewer than 6 home games. Montana had 8.

I have no real point I’m trying to make other than showing that the inauguaral season in the new Bridgeforth Stadium was a great success attendance wise. Well, and to show that the MAC and other lower level FBS conferences might be a classification above FCS, they probably can’t be called a higher level. Give me the CAA and FCS playoffs over them any day.

 

5 Comments

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  1. hi / Dec 14 2011

    eastern james madison university

  2. Sean / Dec 14 2011

    Last sentence times a hundred

  3. Alan / Dec 14 2011

    “MAC football sucks”

    love it, haha

  4. KingCranium / Dec 15 2011

    If JMU is ever going to move up, dreams of an ECC excepted, we’re going to have to toil in some cruddy conference for a while. The MAC has a few advantages in that travel time wouldn’t dramatically increase, we should be automatically competitive, and even the GMAC bowl gets more exposure than the FCS championship game. But I’m concerned that fan support would fall dramatically for most MAC foes and especially those tuesday night matchups against Western Michigan. As much as I think FCS football is on the wane and JMU is this close to grabbing the brass ring, for my part I’ve concluded the MAC doesn’t make sense for us.

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