I did my own little attendance study today. I looked at the Top 20 attendances listed in the record books. It was very telling.
First of all, the Top 5 are all Novelty Events. TAMU, Bama, 2 Southern Games and the return of McNeese. Also down this list are the Grambling and Tulane games. I'll say that these were Novelty Events as well meaning that the attendance would have been the same no matter who was the coach or how good we were. They tell you nothing except it was a good job by the AD to get those games scheduled.
That leaves you 13 other games. These attendances are the result of the vitality of the program at the time. They range from 32,800-27,300. Let's break it down by decade.
1970's - 2 games during the Augie run. (76-Arkansas State, 77-NWST) -Before the Oil Bust and we were wining.
1980's - 1 game during the Stokley run. (88-Northern Illinois)
-Next home game after starting the year 4-1 with a blowout win over Rice.
1990's - 1 game during the Stokley run. (93 San Jose State)
-Next home game after starting the year 5-2 with wins over Memphis, Southern Miss and Tulane. On 5 game win streak.
2000's - 1 game during the Bustle run. (08-FIU)
-Next home game after starting the year 5-3 with 3 point loss to Illinois and 8 point loss to Kansas State. On 3 game win streak.
2010's - 6 games during the Hud run. (11-ULM, Nicholls, Troy, North Texas,
13-New Mexico State, Nicholls)
-This is truly impressive. I would say it was the combination of a VERY charismatic HC and lots and lots of winning. Dropoff happened in 2014 after the latech debacle and the Trump video years later.
2020's - 2 games during the Napier run. (21-App State, Texas State)
-Why didn't we show up for the 2019 during the first 11-3 year? That was the year we went 7 weeks during September/Oct/Nov without a Saturday home game. The biggest home game of the year was on a Wednesday. 2020 was the COVID year.
All of this tells me that we have about 30k that could show up if we are winning and/or we have a VERY good motivator at HC. Also, the majority of our non-Novelty Event high attendances are from the 11 Hud/Napier years that just passed.
This tells me our program is very healthy now that we have the RCAF. As long as the Administration doesn't do anything stupid, we will be just fine in our new stadium.
Also, being Hud back in any capacity we can to the program.