Division I FBS Attendance Leaders (Average)... NCAA

way of life. However, I distinctly remember this period where it seemed like UM and UT were constantly fighting for actual rights to having the largest stadium. One writer, and i swear, I am not certain if he was from the north or the south summed it up with a description somewhat like that ta follows:

Michigan and TN, recognized as the two largest college football stadiums, seem to go about things in a completely different approach to lay claim to the actual title. Michigan, it seems, gives thought to things for a year or two and then will begin work on the thoughts and blueprints. and construct an additional 2 to 4,000 increase in actual seats. Whereas TN, when learning of Michigan having surpassed them once again in having the largest structure will add a wing, an addition, an extension??? Does not matter what you call it, the result is Michigan Stadium always looks like a work created as a result of planning. Neyland Stadium, on the other hand, looks like a stadium comprised of a large number of fixed seats for which the stadium was designed, and then an almost uncountable number of additions best described as simple "lean tos.'

So regardless of your takeaway, there is an amount of pride that goes into this. However, and I realize the arrogance of the words as I type them, there exists a reason for the phrase, "The Michigan Difference." When Yost first enivisioned this "monstrosity" known as Michigan Stadium, he was met with more than a few who doubted his wisdom of creating a stadium capable of seating 80,000 fans during a period of average attendance of 40K and during big games, surpassing 50,000. But instead of trying to placate his doubters, he took pleasure in what he knew only augmented their perception that he was engaging in a foolish enterprise. "No," he would say. "This stadium is not being built to accomodate 80,000. Can't you envision the day where people will be driving from all over this state, these cornfield we now look at being replaced by housing, commerce, additions to the university, tied together by a network of highways, some beginning at the westen most part, some the eastern most part, the northen and the south, to arrive here on Saturady afternoons? I did not desgin this for 80,000. The footings I requested and was granted were for a stadium that could be enlarged to accomodated over 130,000 fans."

Damn, talk about a visionary, it was Fielding H. Yost. However, I would never have known of the above if not for another man that came along some 30 years after Fielding last set down his whistle to become A.D., if not for a man that not only understood Fielding, Fritz, Bennie and Bump, but the entire "Privilege of Michigan," as he referred to it in his book, Tradition. The very same man who scolded one of his assistants when bitching about the coaches locker room when having to hang his coat on nothing more than a nail sticking out a piece of wood said, "Damn, Bo, we had better accomodations than this when we were at Miami of OH,"  would I have known about the tremendous tradition here, but a young man from OH who certainly did, and if only in my imagination, more than likely, do I see him smiling, somehow knowing when  turned down for the Unviersity of WI job that was open a year or two prior, allow him and Canham  to agree to a contract, by handshake, that gave him 18,000 a year in salary and the "privilege," using his words, of earning it.

I'm guessing, he earned it.