Michigan Football leads nation in attendance yet again

Does that count as a championship?

I'm frankly shocked Alabama came in at 95.7% of capacity.  Can that be true? 

This is a great example as to why we should not be comfortable with at 9-3 every year.  Tired of the "this is who we've always been" thing.  We have the resources to compete with anybody if we choose.

Gang

Sigh, can we not talk about this. Those numbers are made up. It’s better to not shine a light here. 

Attendance at 103.6% capacity feels like when a dictator wins an election with 110% of the vote. 

Yeah, apparently they count everybody on the grounds. That's how we get to 103%.

So I guess if anyone wants to challenge Michigan on attendence, all they have to do is hire more staff. Or grab some people off the street. "Hey you! What are you doing for the next couple of hours? I'll give you $20 to stand on this side of the fance."

People go to Tennessee games? 

Go Blue. 

Overall attendance is nice, but I think a factor to consider is "how nice" the non-football experience is for game attendees as well.  The best analogy I can think of is the Chicago Cubs.

Wrigley Field is beautiful, the neighborhood around it is great, and they're a "classic" team with a nation wide footprint. That's awesome for making money if you're the team owner, but it kind of sucks if the goal is simply to win championships. It's basically an outdoor beer garden & people will buy Cubs swag even when they suck.  Theyre's real no incentive necessarily for the team owner to build a championship machine.

Meanwhile, certain teams basically HAVE to win in order to get buts in the seats, sell over priced soft drinks, sell officially licensed merchandise, etc.  The Chicago White Socks are a prime example.  Same city as the Cubs, but it's a regional baseball club.  The stadium sits right by the highway in a mediocre part of town, and the stadium itself is pretty sterile.

I love Michigan. I love (mostly) the game day experience minus the stadium RAWK. But sometimes I think the main reason the boosters, AD, and president are content to be "good" but not be more activist pushing for the NIL stuff & other legitimate reforms likely to make us truly "elite" is because they've got too much going for them.  Michigan has such a nice enviornment, surrounding geography, and classic nation-wide fanbase, that--short of skidding to Rich Rod or Hokean levels--their revenues aren't likely to take any kind of major dive even if they drop another several in a row to Ohio State & Michigan fails to win any Big Ten Championship for another decade.  The set-up is just too cushy.

Hate to tell you all this, but the reported attendance figures at the game are NOT the number of people in the stadium.  It never has been.  It's the number of tickets sold plus some fudge factor accounting for people on the field like the band, staff, etc.  The actual people in the Big House is much less than the inflated number reported in the 3rd quarter to the crowd.  The Wall Street Journal did an extensive study and article on this based on actual number of scanned tickets at the gate.  And the results clearly show that announced attendance is way higher at almost all schools than the number of butts sitting in the seats.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-footballs-growing-problem-empty-seats-1535634001?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2&mod=djemMTIPOFF_h

I've been at many games at Michigan Stadium when the attendance was announced at 109,000 or more and I could see a lot of empty seats around me.  It supports what the article says.  Believe what you want, but I think a lot of people have decided that sitting at home watching the game on a bigscreen HD TV is better than sitting in the stadium waiting for TV timeouts, all the travel expenses, overpriced food, parking, etc. etc.