Considering where this team was at the beginning of this decade, 15,796 for the least-attended game of the year is nothing short of remarkable.
5 years ago, this would've been a game with 7,000 in attendance. I remember attending a certain game in mid-November 2003 against Concordia-St. Paul where the attendance was 7,045. I said, THE ATTENDANCE WAS 7,045. I saw chunks of open seats in the lower half of sec. 1, the most primo seats in the house. I could've just taken a seat right there. Almost the entire north end zone was bare empty. It was embarrassing.
We almost had 16,000 today. This is our low point for the year. Today's crowd is a testament to how huge our fan base has become in the past 5 years.
Yeah, the student section was thin and quiet, I chalk that up to a lot of students deciding to sleep in and not go to what was probably the 2nd-least important game of the year. Hell, even I almost decided to sleep in myself, and I consider myself one of the hardcores. Today, we were playing a team that NOBODY cared about. I heard people in the student section talking about how sorry they felt for this Southern Utah team.
We now average 18,148 per game. if you told me back in 2003 that our 2007 average would be over 18,000 per game and that we would sell out 5 of 6 home games in late 2006-2007, I would have said you were on something, then I would ask for a little of that myself.
Also, did you know that we are almost in the top-100 in average attendance nationwide regardless of division?? We were something like #107 last week. this team has good support. Don't get down on the fans, PLEASE.