White Pill: College Football Attendance Hits 20-Year Low

I’ve also evolved on sportsball.

“Major-college football experienced its largest per-game attendance drop in 34 years and second-largest ever, according to recently released NCAA figures.

Attendance among the 129 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams in 2017 was down an average of 1,409 fans per game from 2016. That marked the largest drop since 1983 when average attendance declined 1,527 fans per game from 1982.

The 2017 FBS average of 42,203 fans per game is the lowest since 1997.

That average attendance drop marked the second-sharpest decline since the NCAA began keeping track of college football attendance in 1948. For the first time in history, average attendance declined nationally for four consecutive seasons.

The 2017 numbers include FBS home games, neutral-site games, bowl games and the College Football Playoff. …

Even the most rabid league in the country saw a dip. In 2017, the SEC experienced its sharpest per-game decline — down an average 2,433 fans — since 1992. That figure led the Power Five in fans lost per game in 2017.

While the SEC led all FBS conferences in average attendance for the 20th consecutive year, its average attendance (75,074) was the lowest since 2005. The SEC has slipped an average of 2,926 fans per game (3.7 percent) since a record 78,630 average in 2015. …”

I used to watch college football.

I had grown up with it. Alabama is a football crazy state. I used to dismiss the idea that there was any connection between college football and racial attitudes. My interest in it began to wane around the time that I got married and I didn’t watch any college football games at all in 2017.

Socially, I would only watch a football game if it was on television in a bar or a restaurant while I was eating out, or if I was over at a friend’s house and it was on television. It was Richard Spencer’s speech at Auburn that finally changed my views of the subject. I was astounded by the sheer number of Auburn students whose very sense of identity had come to be based on a football game.

Anyway, the Alt-Right is winning the argument against cuckball. Youth attitudes toward the sport are changing. We need to keep pushing the argument and decoupling sports from identity.