This post is about home attendance at The Citadel, which is a subject I’ve written about many times over the years. I used to write about it every year, but then 2020 happened and, well…
Anyway, what follows is partly a cut-and-paste job from previous editions of this review along with a decent amount of new and updated information. It isn’t exactly groundbreaking, to be sure, but since I’ve updated the spreadsheet I figured I would post about it.
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Ah, yes, the spreadsheet:
Annual attendance at Johnson Hagood Stadium, 1964-2022
The above link is to a spreadsheet that tracks attendance for The Citadel’s home football games, and which has now been updated to include the 2022 season. The spreadsheet lists year-by-year totals and average game attendance, and the win/loss record for the Bulldogs in each season. There is also a category ranking the years by average attendance.
I have also included the home win/loss records for each season.
The 2020 season includes the four games played in the fall of 2020 and the eight contests played in the spring of 2021. The games included in the 2021 campaign are only those played in the fall (I guess technically some of them took place in late summer, but you know what I mean).
Other columns refer to the program’s winning percentage over a two-year, three-year, five-year, and ten-year period, with the “current” season being the final year in each category. For example, the three-year winning percentage for 1970 (54.84%) is made up of the 1968, 1969, and 1970 seasons.
I include those categories mainly to see what impact, if any, constant winning (or losing) has on long-term attendance trends.
I have also compared average attendance for the first two games of a season to the last two contests of the same campaign. There are inherent sample-size issues when making such a comparison (weather, opponent fan base, etc.), but it doesn’t hurt to see how things have shaken out. The fall 2020/spring 2021 sort-of-season is not included.
- 2011 [4-7 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 12,756; final two home games, average attendance of 12,387 (including Homecoming)
- 2012 [7-4 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 13,281; final two home games, average attendance of 13,715 (including Homecoming)
- 2013 [5-7 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 13,370; final two home games, average attendance of 12,948 (including Homecoming)
- 2014 [5-7 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 9,700; final two home games, average attendance of 9,563 (including Homecoming)
- 2015 [9-4 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 8,356; final two home games, average attendance of 12,465 (including Homecoming)
- 2016 [10-2 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 13,299; final two home games, average attendance of 13,996 (including Homecoming)
- 2017 [5-6 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 8,718; final two home games, average attendance of 9,496 (including Homecoming)
- 2018 [5-6 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 9,559; final two home games, average attendance of 9,511 (including Homecoming and a rescheduled game)
- 2019 [6-6 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 8,517; final two home games, average attendance of 9,141 (including Homecoming)
- 2021 [4-7 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 9,503; final two home games, average attendance of 10,189 (including Homecoming)
- 2022 [4-7 overall record]: First two home games, average attendance of 10,339 (including Parents’ Day); final two home games, average attendance of 10,022 (including Homecoming and a game against a non-NCAA/NAIA opponent)
Since 1964, the Bulldogs’ record at Johnson Hagood Stadium is 198-130 (60.4%). The average home attendance over that time period is 13,590. However, there has not been a season in which home attendance averaged more than 13,590 since 2007.
The current stadium capacity is less than 12,000, due to the demolition of the East stands in the spring of 2017, so The Citadel cannot expect to see an increase in attendance to the levels of the early part of this century anytime in the near future. The higher attendance figures for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are even further out of sight.
Last year’s average home attendance of 9,865 ranked 53rd out of the 59 seasons included in this survey. Seven of the eight lowest season averages have occurred since 2014.
As always, it is worth noting that the cutoff for accuracy in attendance numbers means years like 1959 (eight wins), 1960 (Tangerine Bowl victory), and 1961 (SoCon title) cannot be included for comparison in this review, not to mention any of the other years from 1948, when the most recent iteration of Johnson Hagood Stadium opened, through the 1963 season. I do not have a high degree of confidence in any “public” season attendance figures prior to 1964. (It could be suggested that I shouldn’t be particularly confident of the attendance numbers that followed, either.)
It is generally accepted that the largest home attendance for The Citadel at any pre-1964 contest was for the Homecoming game against Clemson in 1948, when an estimated 16,000 fans were present for the dedication of the “new” Johnson Hagood Stadium.
In case anyone was wondering, here are the top average attendance marks over two-year, three-year, five-year, and ten-year periods:
- Two years: 1975-76 (18,250). Rest of the top five: 1991-92, 1979-80, 1990-91, 1989-90
- Three years: 1990-92 (17,457). Rest of the top five: 1989-91, 1978-80, 1991-93, 1975-77
- Five years: 1988-92 (17,126). Rest of the top five: 1989-93, 1975-79, 1976-80, 1990-94
- Ten years: 1975-84 (16,250). Rest of the top five: 1983-92, 1974-83, 1976-85, 1984-93
Average attendance by decade:
- 1964-69: 11,998
- 1970-79: 15,053
- 1980-89: 15,398
- 1990-99: 14,955
- 2000-09: 13,850
- 2010-19: 11,179
- 2020-22: 7,763 (average attendance for the past two seasons is 9,929)
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Here is a spreadsheet that lists the attendance numbers for all SoCon games (conference matchups only) in 2022:
(Apologies for the less-than-stellar formatting, but I think it is readable enough.)
Last season, Chattanooga was the top overall road draw in league play, which was something of a surprise — to me, anyway. In four road games, the Mocs played before crowds averaging 10,291.50. Of course, those numbers were definitely buoyed by the location of those four contests, with the host schools being The Citadel, Furman, ETSU, and Western Carolina. Those four ranked 2-3-4-5 in home attendance for conference games.
Conversely, Mercer (which had the highest home attendance average for league contests) ranked last as a road draw, with an average of 6086.25 fans, thanks almost entirely to playing away from home against Chattanooga, VMI, Samford, and Wofford, the four schools that made up the bottom half of the league in conference home attendance (with the Terriers bringing up the rear with an average of 4,905.75 fans per league matchup).
Incidentally, the highest attended home game for Wofford in 2022 was against ETSU (5,849). This was the first time in even-numbered years since 2006 that a home game versus The Citadel was not Wofford’s highest-attended regular-season contest. (In 2006, the Terriers’ highest-attended home game was against South Carolina State.)
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Next up, I’ll be posting a fairly extensive breakdown of FCS attendance since 2012.
Filed under: Football, The Citadel | Tagged: Attendance, FCS, SoCon, The Citadel |
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