Purdue's pathetic game day attendance.

a few years ago, it still looks like the embarassing crap-hole that I visited in the mid-80's to watch Michigan give Purdue their annual spanking.  The end zone seats still look like the rickety high school bleachers back then.  And fall break or no fall break, there's no excuse for students not showing up for this game.  They wouldn't do that for a home basketball game.  

There is another program that went 58-7-1 over the course of six seasons from 1969 through 1974, one of the best records in the entire country.

The season records were 8-3, 9-1, 11-1, 10-1, 10-0-1, and 10-1.

At the start of the season from '70 through '74, they were ranked #8, #4, #11, #5, and #6.

This team had 38 home games during this span of national excellence. How did the fan base respond? There were exactly 7 capacity crowds. As late as November 1974, with the team 9-0 and ranked #3 in the nation, a crowd of 88K—12,000 under capacity—watched the home team dismantle Purdue (ironically enough) 51-0.

Attendance was starting to really get ramped up in the 1975 season when the team started out #3, but even so there were still three home games with less than capacity crowds.

This attendance record is especially interesting given the fact that comparatively few of the games were televised back then, meaning you either were at the game or had to be content with grainy photos in the local paper, or maybe an article in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

I think this means that it will probably take 5 years or so of sustained excellence for most fan bases to fill a stadium on an every-game basis, and even then the excellence has to be continuous. It's a remarkable testament to this fan base that during three miserable seasons recently there were still (nominally) capacity crowds.

Why do you guys take such exception to other people not sharing your priorities? 

break, and purdue is always bound to choke when it counts. they didnt even sell out when they played wisconsin and both were top ten and gameday was there a few years ago. But mainly, it was fall break.

"A Michigan Man, or Woman, does not discuss Purdue."

 

I was at the game.  I thought it was (at its peak) more like 80-85% full altogether, but I could not believe how late-arriving the crowd was.  A huge number of fans showed up right at kickoff or later - and I'm not talking about students.  And there definitely were lots of early departures, some as early as halftime.    

Michigan fans were very well-represented.  I thought we were around a quarter of the crowd.  Purdue fans were pretty gracious.  It was a fun trip.  It definitely made me appreciate going to games here in Ann Arbor though.  There wasn't anywhere near the same vibe on campus for the game that there is for any game here.

Purdue draws as well as they do.  For most of my football watching lifetime, roughly 32 years, Purdue has been a very mediocre program.  Their big draw in the 70's to 80's was a succession of terrific QB's but not much else.  In the early 90's they were pretty much a dumpster fire under Jim Colleto before Wilfred Brimley brought in a guy named Drew Breese.

 

I consider them a step above Northwestern/Illinois in the past couple decades in terms of success behind Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Iowa.

I was in the north endzone, and the Purufe fans around us left right after they kicked the field goal. They parted with these kind words:

"let's go get wasted."
"at least we have jobs here."
"wait 'til you play Ohio State."