OT: UCLA Sets All-Time-Low Attendance Record at Rose Bowl
In their first game since being announced as a future member of the Big Ten, UCLA set an all-time-low attendance record for its game against Bowling Green at the Rose Bowl. Only 27,143 people purchased a ticket, but actual attendance was much lower than that. The photos of the crowd are comical. It looks like a COVID game, or when a high school plays in a college stadium.
Yes, it was hot. Yes, the students hadn't started classes yet. And yes, the stadium is located a damn hour from campus. All those factors have been true in the past, too. I guess I didn't realize just how much this school's football fan base sucks.
September 5th, 2022 at 11:42 AM ^
" guess I didn't realize just how much this school's football fan base sucks."
that sounds like a you problem.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:21 PM ^
In fairness to UCLA, there is a lot more for college kids to do in LA compared to Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is nice but it doesn't have nightclubs or beaches or anything similar.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:27 PM ^
Yes of course, this has been the case forever. That’s why I am confused as to why the OP posted this to shame ucla as if this is news.
September 5th, 2022 at 7:08 PM ^
"Yes of course, this has been the case forever. That’s why I am confused as to why the OP posted this to shame ucla as if this is news. "
All time records are, by definition, news. Perhaps you should understand the point of the post before, ahem, shaming it.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:33 PM ^
there is a lot more for college kids to do in LA compared to Ann Arbor.
Sure, but you have all year to do those things. You have only 6-8 chances a year to see your school play football at home.
If going to the beach or whatever is more important to you than watching your team play . . . then you're simply not that much of a fan.
September 5th, 2022 at 2:11 PM ^
SoCal is a frontrunner fanbase. So, no, they're not much of sports fans.
Unless, of course, the sports team is a winner, and then it's the hip thing to do. LA has never been a sports town, it's a "stars" town. How else can you imagine the NFL spending so many years not in LA? The people just wants to see stars, not sports. Only when the sports people become stars are they interested.
But to the OP's point, it's not that UCLA attendance is low. This is all-time record low.
September 5th, 2022 at 7:31 PM ^
Frontrunner you say?
I heard of a guy stranded on 3rd that might just be a good fit out there. I think he'd much prefer the heat to the brutal midwest snow and flu season :)
September 5th, 2022 at 8:14 PM ^
93,702 fans showed up for an exhibition soccer game at the Rose Bowl this summer. If you put a good product on the field, the fans will go to the Rose Bowl.
To your point about SoCal fans, the Dodgers have drawn 3M+ in good years and bad.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/LAD/attend.shtml
I dare you to tell a Dodger, Kings, Galaxy or LAFC fan that SoCal fans are “not much of sports fans.” It’s not a big UCLA football town. It’s a huge MLB and MLS city.
Lakers fans are a bunch of front runners, but even they didn’t jump ship and support the Clippers when they got good.
September 5th, 2022 at 9:31 PM ^
There are Dodger, Kings, Galaxy, Lakers, LAFC etc fans for sure. Passionate fans at that. But there are also 10M people in LA county alone. The proportion of sports fans are relatively low. But also more of a pro sports town and UCLA football is way down the pecking order.
September 5th, 2022 at 2:12 PM ^
To add to that, the play at the Rose Bowl in Pasedena, which is a half an hour to an hour drive on a Saturday. So instead of tailgating, drinking beers, etc., you've got to find a ride and make sure someone is sober enough to drive home from the game. Not going to get a lot of fans showing up, especially if the team is crappy. I would choose beach, homework, etc. over that experience as well
September 5th, 2022 at 8:07 PM ^
The Rose Bowl Game is an awesome experience, went to the '98 one.
Regular season games in the afternoon are fucking awful, hot as fuck, my GF fainted during the game, couldn't find a parking spot. We were 5 miles from the stadium with an hour leeway and I ended up having to drop my GF, brother and nephew off and find a spot and missed most of the 1st quarter. This was the 2000 game where we blew a 10 pt lead in 3rd qt. and lost 23-20 with rs fr Navarre, had Henson played we would have destroyed them, ugh!
UCLA fans suck, no class where as USC fans are classy like Michigan fans.
September 6th, 2022 at 5:07 PM ^
why don't you suck USC off some more. How on earth could you consider those spoiled brats a better group than UCLA fans
September 5th, 2022 at 9:32 PM ^
Takes a lot longer than an half hour to get to and from the Rose Bowl from Westwood on a game day. More like an hour min.
September 5th, 2022 at 4:51 PM ^
Unless you have uber rich parents, you aren't hitting West Hollywood hotspots.
The beach...meh. am an East Coast Wolverine
September 5th, 2022 at 6:11 PM ^
Not only that but UCLA campus is 33 minute drive away from the Rose Bowl stadium plus the traffic in LA always has been horrendous. Throw in the hot weather. No one wants to sit outside at 100+ degrees for 4+ hours.
September 5th, 2022 at 6:46 PM ^
Hard to describe how hot it's been in SoCal for the weekend. Starting to let up a little. I would guess that Pasadena was more like 105 with sitting in a seat in a bowl closer to 115+. And no it wasn't dry - sprinkled a little at my place yesterday morn so without being a meterologist I'm thinking it was not far from 100% humidity. The Dodger games - which are sold out every game, every year, for quite awhile, looked like they were about 20% full. That's for a team that's probably gonna get 110 wins. Glad football started cause I let everyone know it was football all day for me - with the AC pumpin.
September 5th, 2022 at 7:47 PM ^
what a weird reason to take a shot at someone, that they didn’t realize ucla has a lousy fanbase.
September 5th, 2022 at 8:06 PM ^
What's even more weird is thinking that UCLA's lack of fan support is worthy of it's own post on a Michigan message board after OT season is over. What a weird thing to shame/dunk on them for. Also, I guarantee most on this board already knew of the UCLA fanbase apathy.
Lot's of weird stuff going on around here.
September 5th, 2022 at 11:42 AM ^
College football is gradually declining in cultural relevance. This is one more sign.
September 5th, 2022 at 11:45 AM ^
I don’t take social cues from a man who eats other men.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:13 PM ^
I don't know that it's declining in cultural relevance overall as the TV ratings are still strong. But the games are getting ridiculously long and expensive to attend. And now with expanded playoffs they will become less relevant as you will be able to lose 2-3 games and still get in. So attendance is inevitably going to drop. I wonder if the powers that be truly understand the effects of their actions.
My guess is no, as all they see are $$$$.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:29 PM ^
This is really the issue. The combination of high prices and a worsening in-stadium experience, with more and more media timeouts, is pushing fans to stay home. They still care but don't want to deal with all the hassle.
We're fortunate that our team/stadium are still a major draw, but we're not immune to this either.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:45 PM ^
Disagree on less relevance because of a larger playoff. Now if you're ranked ~7-15, your games at the end of the season matter so much more. And 1-10 is playing for byes and home field. So many more games are going to matter more with expanded playoffs.
September 5th, 2022 at 3:24 PM ^
Right... it's hard to understand the resistance to this idea. It will make the late season far more exciting, whether you're a fan of a team in that 7-15 range or not. IDK about everyone else, but I had gotten so tired of seeing some combo of Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, OSU, and Oklahoma taking up the 4 playoff spots every damn year that I wouldn't have watched last year if not for us and Cinci getting in.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:04 PM ^
that..... or
1. We can continue to watch OSU/UGA/Alabama/Clemson play in their own private 4-team playoff every year.
2. We can watch Michigan continue to schedule 3 horseshit OOC cupcakes every seaon so as not to, heaven forbid, lose a great, compelling OOC game because our AD thinks losing even one OOC will keep us from making a 4-team playoff.
I'll take a 12-team playoff as it will include more than alabama/osu/clemson/uga and hopefully allow our AD to have the balls to schedule some good OOC games.
September 5th, 2022 at 3:27 PM ^
This is exactly it. Look at how many more good team vs. good team matchups there are in college basketball's non-conference portion. It's because you can lose a few games and still not only get into the tournament, but get a high seed if you have enough quality wins throughout the season. In fact, the very idea that you need quality wins to earn a high seed encourages teams to go out and schedule tough non-con games.
September 5th, 2022 at 6:03 PM ^
No it won’t. You lose three games and you’re out. Most playoff quality teams have 3-4 tough opponents each year. You schedule a tough non-con opponent and lose and you’re out.
September 5th, 2022 at 8:08 PM ^
Oh no, think of all the 3 loss teams that are going to get pushed out of the 12 team playoff!!!!!!
September 5th, 2022 at 7:21 PM ^
Wait… didn’t we just play UW last year? Not the AD’s fault Washington sucked last year
September 5th, 2022 at 8:09 PM ^
We did, and I flew back for it along with my buddy and his two sons from Seattle, it was great!
And now look at this year's and next year's horseshit schedules. Not flying back for any of those 6 cupcakes.
12-team playoff should result on the courage to actually play good OOC games.
September 5th, 2022 at 2:20 PM ^
The last time I went to a major college football game, two years ago, was with my daughter, who yearned to see what the excitement was all about. We left in the middle of the third quarter of a tight game between two one-time football powers, agreeing that it had been a hot, sometimes annoying, only intermittently interesting experience--punctuated by long stretches of silence and inactivity for commercial breaks.
UCLA students tend to be bright. They may just be smart enough to have it on in the background while they do ten other things, checking in in case a game is competitive down the stretch. I'm not faulting them. Will be interesting to see whether a move to the B1G arouses interest.
We're lucky that M is such a storied, interesting, still-vital program.
September 5th, 2022 at 7:08 PM ^
It is absolutely declining in cultural relevance and dramatically fewer people under 35 care about college football.
The tail will be long because it'll take the rest of us a while to age out but it's definitely declining.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:16 PM ^
If attendance is your measure all sports, movies, music, etc…are declining in cultural relevance.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:23 PM ^
The hard truth is that life is declining in cultural relevance.
September 5th, 2022 at 5:05 PM ^
Are you telling me that you don’t consider Tik Tok dances to be culture?
September 5th, 2022 at 12:38 PM ^
It's not the relevance that's declining, it's the culture part.
For example: Top Gun: Maverick.
Put out good product and people will show up. It's just hard to find good product these days.
September 5th, 2022 at 12:52 PM ^
I think it’s more of the availability of options now. 10-15 years ago your tv options were whatever was on cable at that moment, and sports probably mattered more than reruns to people. Now you have a new prestige show or two on 10 apps, you can stream whatever music you want, and if you are interested in a new esoteric hobby there’s 100+ on YouTube on how to do it.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:08 PM ^
You consider "Top Gun: Maverick" a good product. That's the problem.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:23 PM ^
Boooo!
It’s a damn good movie.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:34 PM ^
That movie has made more $ so far this year (1.355 billion) than the ENTIRE B1G television contract will annually. It's more relevant worldwide than college football is. The truth is, college football is regionally relevant in certain parts of the U.S. and nowhere else.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:45 PM ^
Was anyone arguing that college football has a big worldwide audience? Hell, the NFL is pretty much a niche interest outside of North America.
September 5th, 2022 at 5:59 PM ^
If you don't understand the point I was making, that's a you problem.
September 5th, 2022 at 2:12 PM ^
Ouch, that movie was painful. Nostalgic, but painful. It was barely a rewrite of the original, with more inclusive casting. I mean, I view that movie as an indictment of how bad or boring (hey look, another super hero movie!) everything else is not necessarily that it was so epic in its own regard…
September 5th, 2022 at 1:31 PM ^
Attendance is one measure, but I'm also going somewhat anecdotally on what I see with the up and coming generation. Kids, as a whole, appear to me to be nowhere near as interested in watching college football as they were when I was growing up. I don't see the interest in playing football in decline, but fandom of the sport -- yes. I do perceive an uptick in the interest in high school football, which I think has been spurred by the internet and recruiting sites. And, if I might put my armchair psychologist hat on, I would say that it's also an effort to seek a mythical purity and innocence -- an innocence that college football used to be perceived as having and no longer does.
Music and movies are in decline quality-wise, probably moreso than college football. It's no surprise that they suffer from the same problem.
Edit: I live in Ohio, so it's not an area where college football isn't or shouldn't be crazy for the sport.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:37 PM ^
According to statista.com, the number of people over the age of six playing tackle football in the United States has declined from 8.4 million in 2006 to 5.16 million in 2018.
Playing football is definitely in decline but so is the fandom.
September 5th, 2022 at 1:42 PM ^
Interesting. Wow. I was not aware that it had fallen that sharply.
September 5th, 2022 at 5:20 PM ^
To be fair, flag football participation has gone up (though i dont think by as much as tackle has gone down).
September 5th, 2022 at 1:42 PM ^
I played football and ultimately it led to multiple spinal surgeries. I don't want my kid to play it, but would of course allow him to if that is what really mattered to him. Fortunately for me, he has zero interest in football.
September 5th, 2022 at 3:23 PM ^
This is what I imagine the real Hannibal Lector would sound like today. Saying all this while he’s cutting food on his plate and decanting a bottle of wine.