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Pitt's attendance - season by season, since 2001

UPitt '89

UPitt '89

Board of Trustee
Gold Member
Mar 14, 2002
29,087
21,559
113
According to NCAA.org

2001: 48,915 (46th nationally).... Walt Harris, 7-5
2002: 44,424 (48th nationally).... Walt Harris, 9-4
2003: 59,197 (28th nationally).... Walt Harris, 8-5
2004: 41,600 (54th nationally).... Walt Harris, 8-4
2005: 40,272 (56th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 5-6
2006: 43,305 (48th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 6-6
2007: 33,315 (70th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 5-7
2008: 49,352 (44th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 9-4
2009: 53,446 (40th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 10-3
2010: 52,165 (42nd nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 8-5
2011: 46,003 (49th nationally).... Todd Graham, 6-7
2012: 41,494 (57th nationally).... Paul Chryst, 6-7
2013: 49,741 (43rd nationally).... Paul Chryst, 7-6
2014: 41,315 (60th nationally).... Paul Chryst, 6-7
2015: 49,755 (42nd nationally).... Pat Narduzzi, 8-3

Comments:

- 2003 was a very good attendance year. Last year of Miami and VT in the Big East and Larry Fitzgerald going for the Heisman Trophy.

- 2004 through 2007.... mostly bad teams in a bad league.

- 2008 through 2010.... Good teams that were favored to win the league, before shitting the bed in the regular season.

- 2011 through present.... Coaching turmoil

- The 1976 championship team averaged 45,505... with 6 games at Pitt Stadium and one at Three Rivers. The myth that "on-campus" equals a full house was exposed that year. Only 2 sellouts (WVU at Pitt Stadium, PSU at Three Rivers).

- The difference between 2003 and 2007 is stark. The Big East was in real trouble in 2007 and Pitt was a very bad team, except for 13-9.

- 2015, with the help of 68K at the Notre Dame game, has been an above average year for Pitt - though not great. The Miami game will probably drop the average down a little bit.

Next year, Pitt will average over 50,000. In a 70,000 seat stadium, that still looks VERY empty, and there's nothing we can do about that besides replacing those god-awful yellow seats or tarping off the North upper deck bleacher seats and forcing those people down below.
 
Attendance at Heinz is ever so slightly better then pre 1990s Pitt Stadium. It should be much better due to attendance inflation. One thing is clear. Pitt has about 30-33k diehards and that hasn't changed. In a good year we can gain 25,000 people at games.

pitt_attendance_chart.jpg
 
HailtoPitt said:
Attendance at Heinz is ever so slightly better then pre 1990s Pitt Stadium. It should be much better due to attendance inflation.

pitt_attendance_chart.jpg
Click to expand...
Cool graph.

But "attendance inflation"? Where do you get that from? The population in the Pittsburgh area has shrunk or stayed stagnant in every year of the graph...... and attendance is down the past few years across the entire NCAA as hi-def TV and expensive tickets have put downward pressure on attendance.

The entire concept of "attendance inflation" is flawed, especially with a city like Pittsburgh that had twice as many residents in 1975 than it has today.
 
UPitt '89 said:
Cool graph.

But "attendance inflation"? Where do you get that from? The population in the Pittsburgh area has shrunk or stayed stagnant in every year of the graph...... and attendance is down the past few years across the entire NCAA as hi-def TV and expensive tickets have put downward pressure on attendance.

The entire concept of "attendance inflation" is flawed, especially with a city like Pittsburgh that had twice as many residents in 1975 than it has today.
Click to expand...

I think an increase in attendance over a 30 year period is true for just about every big football program, whether they are in a thriving area or a depressed area that has seen a steep loss of population. Pitt, I'm guessing, is one of the few exceptions where attendance has remained about the same 30 years later. Deemphasizing football followed by decades of screwups will do that.
 
UPitt '89 said:
According to NCAA.org

2001: 48,915 (46th nationally).... Walt Harris, 7-5
2002: 44,424 (48th nationally).... Walt Harris, 9-4
2003: 59,197 (28th nationally).... Walt Harris, 8-5
2004: 41,600 (54th nationally).... Walt Harris, 8-4
2005: 40,272 (56th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 5-6
2006: 43,305 (48th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 6-6
2007: 33,315 (70th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 5-7
2008: 49,352 (44th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 9-4
2009: 53,446 (40th nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 10-3
2010: 52,165 (42nd nationally).... Dave Wannstedt, 8-5
2011: 46,003 (49th nationally).... Todd Graham, 6-7
2012: 41,494 (57th nationally).... Paul Chryst, 6-7
2013: 49,741 (43rd nationally).... Paul Chryst, 7-6
2014: 41,315 (60th nationally).... Paul Chryst, 6-7
2015: 49,755 (42nd nationally).... Pat Narduzzi, 8-3

Comments:

- 2003 was a very good attendance year. Last year of Miami and VT in the Big East and Larry Fitzgerald going for the Heisman Trophy.

- 2004 through 2007.... mostly bad teams in a bad league.

- 2008 through 2010.... Good teams that were favored to win the league, before shitting the bed in the regular season.

- 2011 through present.... Coaching turmoil

- The 1976 championship team averaged 45,505... with 6 games at Pitt Stadium and one at Three Rivers. The myth that "on-campus" equals a full house was exposed that year. Only 2 sellouts (WVU at Pitt Stadium, PSU at Three Rivers).

- The difference between 2003 and 2007 is stark. The Big East was in real trouble in 2007 and Pitt was a very bad team, except for 13-9.

- 2015, with the help of 68K at the Notre Dame game, has been an above average year for Pitt - though not great. The Miami game will probably drop the average down a little bit.

Next year, Pitt will average over 50,000. In a 70,000 seat stadium, that still looks VERY empty, and there's nothing we can do about that besides replacing those god-awful yellow seats or tarping off the North upper deck bleacher seats and forcing those people down below.
Click to expand...


The on campus/off campus debate is not actually about attendance [short term], so it appears you fundamentally do not understand the issue. Now that Pitt appears to have an AD that gets football, a new Chancellor that seems to understand the importance and value of inter-collegiate athletics, and a high energy/enthusiastic football coach who is capable of public speaking, it will be very interesting to see what the leadership is able to do in a very tough marketplace, namely Pittsburgh. For now, I am betting on them to make more progress than we have seen in quite a few years. Hail to Pitt!
 
UPitt '89 said:
Cool graph.

But "attendance inflation"? Where do you get that from? The population in the Pittsburgh area has shrunk or stayed stagnant in every year of the graph...... and attendance is down the past few years across the entire NCAA as hi-def TV and expensive tickets have put downward pressure on attendance.

The entire concept of "attendance inflation" is flawed, especially with a city like Pittsburgh that had twice as many residents in 1975 than it has today.
Click to expand...


Once again, you fail to grasp his point. The point is/was that Pitt has overstated attendance since the arrival of AD Pederson on the scene. So yeah, those years have numbers that really did not match reality--making it very difficult to compare to prior years when attendance numbers were much closer to reality. Hail to Pitt!
 
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PITTLAW said:
The on campus/off campus debate is not actually about attendance [short term], so it appears you fundamentally do not understand the issue. Now that Pitt appears to have an AD that gets football, a new Chancellor that seems to understand the importance and value of inter-collegiate athletics, and a high energy/enthusiastic football coach who is capable of public speaking, it will be very interesting to see what the leadership is able to do in a very tough marketplace, namely Pittsburgh. For now, I am betting on them to make more progress than we have seen in quite a few years. Hail to Pitt!
Click to expand...

I agree. Attendance is a long term fix that require decades of solid leadership of athletics, something Pitt hasn't been able to do while other schools have stressed the point.
 
PITTLAW said:
Once again, you fail to grasp his point. The point is/was that Pitt has overstated attendance since the arrival of AD Pederson on the scene. So yeah, those years have numbers that really did not match reality--making it very difficult to compare to prior years when attendance numbers were much closer to reality. Hail to Pitt!
Click to expand...

This is a good point. I bet the programs to give away tickets weren't as developed back then, either.
 
Pretty clear that winning equals pittsburghers go to games according to the numbers.

Seems like Narduzzi is getting people back into seats and ysu started so ND and that game stabilizes that.

Future looks bright according to those numbers!! Next year should be higher still
 
Where do the 5,000 students who go each and every year go after graduation? That's 50,000 fans the past ten years who should be driving or flying in for the games. Game day experience must be lacking for students and that includes winning at home.
 
I think they need to now focus on the supply side at least temporarily.
There's too much at Heinz.
 
In 1976 PSU had a stadium that seated 60K, now it seats 107K. Granted they barely break 90 these days. Attendance is upp across the nation since 1976. Pitt Stadium was 56K in the 1976 and we still don't get that much volume normally. We have more than twice the number of undergrads living in Oakland now. We went from 12.5K to 17K in undergrad enrollment and of those, a much larger percentage live in Oakland now. Which also means that we have been graduating more undergraduate alumni per year. Still attendance has not spike since the 70's/80s. With all these variables that should help attendance noted with regard to undergrads, what is the one variable that would hurt attendance? No stadium in Oakland. BOOM!

It was stupid then. Nordy was warned and didn't care. We are stuck with his mess. *I drop the mic and walk off......
 
I would settle for the people showing up to stay the whole game and make noise when needed.
 
Population of Pittsburgh in 1976: 600,000
Population of Pittsburgh in 2015: 300,000

Pick your mike back up. The number of alumni in Pittsburgh is not that high. People graduate and move away, many of them on this board.

Pitt's attendance now is on par with the attendance in the late 70s... but with nowhere near as good a team.

If Pitt gets on the field to where it was in the late 70s, then Pitt will average 60k per game.
 
sonofabit said:
Where do the 5,000 students who go each and every year go after graduation? That's 50,000 fans the past ten years who should be driving or flying in for the games. Game day experience must be lacking for students and that includes winning at home.
Click to expand...
And old alumni die off too. The number of LIVING Pitt alumni is small compared to large land grant schools.
 
Right, they all moved to the surrounding counties for lower taxes. Doh!

We have 5 times the alumni of PSU in Allegheny County and their largest population of any PA county for alumni is Allegheny. We have more than enough people here to support this program. Heinz blows. It's just a shit place to watch a college game. It's not easy for students to get there like it is for the Pete. The list goes on and on. Truth is truth....

UPitt '89 said:
Population of Pittsburgh in 1976: 600,000
Population of Pittsburgh in 2015: 300,000

Pick your mike back up. The number of alumni in Pittsburgh is not that high. People graduate and move away, many of them on this board.

Pitt's attendance now is on par with the attendance in the late 70s... but with nowhere near as good a team.

If Pitt gets on the field to where it was in the late 70s, then Pitt will average 60k per game.
Click to expand...
 
GhostOfPITT40 said:
Right, they all moved to the surrounding counties for lower taxes. Doh!

We have 5 times the alumni of PSU in Allegheny County and their largest population of any PA county for alumni is Allegheny. We have more than enough people here to support this program. Heinz blows. It's just a shit place to watch a college game. It's not easy for students to get there like it is for the Pete. The list goes on and on. Truth is truth....
Click to expand...
You might have a point if we avg. 55k per year at Pitt Stadium and the students stayed the whole game, but they didn't. The building isn't the problem - it is the alums.
 
It's the location, not the building. That shitty Heinz design would do better in Oakland for Pitt games. Students would not be in a hurry because they can walk home, not have to get the first phase of buses or wait an hour after to get home. Or walk across the bridge to take a PAT bus. Alumni would have more to look forward to by being in Oakland, taking in the restaurants and sites of their undergrad days, seeing the Cathedral looming overhead. Instead, you see Stiller crap everywhere and eat bad overpriced food at a bar owned by a fraud who went to ND. You can't put lipstick on a pig. I give Gallagher and Barnes credit for trying harder than Nerdy and his pet Pedie. But it's like spraying perfume on fart. It still smells, just a little different.

Piranha said:
You might have a point if we avg. 55k per year at Pitt Stadium and the students stayed the whole game, but they didn't. The building isn't the problem - it is the alums.
Click to expand...
 
GhostOfPITT40 said:
It's the location, not the building. That shitty Heinz design would do better in Oakland for Pitt games. Students would not be in a hurry because they can walk home, not have to get the first phase of buses or wait an hour after to get home. Or walk across the bridge to take a PAT bus. Alumni would have more to look forward to by being in Oakland, taking in the restaurants and sites of their undergrad days, seeing the Cathedral looming overhead. Instead, you see Stiller crap everywhere and eat bad overpriced food at a bar owned by a fraud who went to ND. You can't put lipstick on a pig. I give Gallagher and Barnes credit for trying harder than Nerdy and his pet Pedie. But it's like spraying perfume on fart. It still smells, just a little different.
Click to expand...
The students rushed home when we played at Pitt Stadium. I was there. The venue is different, but the fans and students act the same.
 
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Piranha said:
The students rushed home when we played at Pitt Stadium. I was there. The venue is different, but the fans and students act the same.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I said that the other day. The people who think that the students didn't leave games early at Pitt Stadium either weren't there or were too drunk to remember what actually happened.

But there is a certain faction of the on campus stadium crowd that are never willing to let the truth get in the way of what they want.
 
UPitt '89 said:
Population of Pittsburgh in 1976: 600,000
Population of Pittsburgh in 2015: 300,000

Pick your mike back up. The number of alumni in Pittsburgh is not that high. People graduate and move away, many of them on this board.

Pitt's attendance now is on par with the attendance in the late 70s... but with nowhere near as good a team.

If Pitt gets on the field to where it was in the late 70s, then Pitt will average 60k per game.
Click to expand...
So according to your reasoning Pitt (having half the population in the city of Pittsuburgh than it did in the late 70's) will, in this day and age of every game on tv/internet somewhere, average more (by a fair marign) fans than it did (never came close to 60K in their heyday) in the 70's? ...barring an NFL type of "blackout" rule, not seeing the logic in that..
 
UPitt '89 said:
I don't buy into this conspiracy theory.

If that were true, our 2007 total wouldn't have been 26000 less than our 2003 total per game, for example.
Click to expand...

Kentucky football was caught fudging football attendance numbers a few years ago. They were ridiculously overstating attendance. A local journalist did a Freedom of Information Act request and found they were overstating by some ridiculous number like 20K.

Just about all schools, including Pitt and PSU lie about attendance. I will say this year's announced attendance numbers seem pretty accurate.
 
I am always one to jump into these stadium threads, preaching on campus stadium.. Even coming up wiht some ingenious ideas and would be spot on if I didn't have tiny setbacks like money, land, and technology that has yet to be invented. But even i have to admit, looking at pitt stadium in regards to attendance, in late 80's and early 90's, there are some abysmal numbers.. I looked at a couple decent years too, think it was either 88 or 89, we were pretty good, not great but ranked at least and there were some extremely poor showings..

1988 we were ranked and playing ECU and got 21k; 1989 we were ranked in high teens starting season off and got 38k for OU and 35k for BC, first two games of season (I was at that Ohio U game), 16k for Temple late in that season too. Those are extremely bad, those are Pirates at three rivers stadium in mid 90s on a Tuesday night bad.. Do you know what 16k would look like at Heinz? It would be like some of those wpial championship games where you can hear a player's dad yell at his son from the stands.

Actually I have a funny story, my buddy was a de end for WVU in mid 90's and he was playing at temple. He said the crowd was so bad, he could hear his dad yelling at him while he was in stance before the snap.. OK, off topic here. My point? I forget actually.
 
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One thing to keep in mind is that even when the team was terrible in the early to mid 1990s, they still averaged 30,000 at worst. That lowest average at Heinz Field was 33,000. That is barely any difference. The stadium doesn't change attendance, except Heinz has a larger capacity, which means the average can be higher because of full house games against teams like ND, WVU and soon PSU.

I wonder if Pitt had the same resources that they do now in regards to marketing and giving the students incentives, what would the attendance be like on campus?
 
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Proves that winning is what will drive attendance. the better winning years, where the better attendance years, tarping the stadium singing "Sweet Caroline" stuff like that is BS, doesn't add shht! Just Win Baby and they will come.
 
sonofabit said:
Where do the 5,000 students who go each and every year go after graduation? That's 50,000 fans the past ten years who should be driving or flying in for the games. Game day experience must be lacking for students and that includes winning at home.
Click to expand...

Basically, most people leave town, get jobs, have a life and decide they have bigger priorities then getting to Pittsburgh every weekend for a football game. Most of those students you talk about aren't hard core football fans, they just go to games to drink and hang with their friends. When I lived in Pittsburgh I went to every game, whn I moved 4 hours away, not so much, when I had a kid and other priorities even less, now in a good year I might go to 2 games, most years just 1, and I ALWAYS GET FREE TICKETS.... And yes, I still have the RIGHT to come here and bitch and moan..... LOL
 
Pghfan said:
1988 we were ranked and playing ECU and got 21k
Click to expand...

I'll never forget that game. Coldest I've ever been in my life. Snowing and wind chills below 0. We stayed until halftime. After the 1st Quarter, there couldn't have been more than 100 people in the stadium.
 
Sean Miller Fan said:
I'll never forget that game. Coldest I've ever been in my life. Snowing and wind chills below 0. We stayed until halftime. After the 1st Quarter, there couldn't have been more than 100 people in the stadium.
Click to expand...
I was at that game too! It was '89, I stayed the whole game, cold, windy, freezing and we thought we should easily beat these guys, but we won 47-42, really wild game.
 
Sean Miller Fan said:
I'll never forget that game. Coldest I've ever been in my life. Snowing and wind chills below 0. We stayed until halftime. After the 1st Quarter, there couldn't have been more than 100 people in the stadium.
Click to expand...
LOL, ok well that explains the crowd much better..
 
Pitt79 said:
I was at that game too! It was '89, I stayed the whole game, cold, windy, freezing and we thought we should easily beat these guys, but we won 47-42, really wild game.
Click to expand...

Fact. If Pitt had played that game at Heinz Field, the temperature would have been 72 degrees.
 
GhostOfPITT40 said:
It's the location, not the building. That shitty Heinz design would do better in Oakland for Pitt games. Students would not be in a hurry because they can walk home, not have to get the first phase of buses or wait an hour after to get home. Or walk across the bridge to take a PAT bus. Alumni would have more to look forward to by being in Oakland, taking in the restaurants and sites of their undergrad days, seeing the Cathedral looming overhead. Instead, you see Stiller crap everywhere and eat bad overpriced food at a bar owned by a fraud who went to ND. You can't put lipstick on a pig. I give Gallagher and Barnes credit for trying harder than Nerdy and his pet Pedie. But it's like spraying perfume on fart. It still smells, just a little different.
Click to expand...
While it would be better for students, I believe many other fans prefer going to a central location and can drive to Oakland any time they want to see the Cathedral
 
UPitt '89 said:
Cool graph.

But "attendance inflation"? Where do you get that from? The population in the Pittsburgh area has shrunk or stayed stagnant in every year of the graph...... and attendance is down the past few years across the entire NCAA as hi-def TV and expensive tickets have put downward pressure on attendance.

The entire concept of "attendance inflation" is flawed, especially with a city like Pittsburgh that had twice as many residents in 1975 than it has today.
Click to expand...

Whoa. Do you think just people who actually live in the city of Pittsburgh, attend sporting events? What about Penn Hills? Mt. Lebanon? Ross Twp? Those three communities border on the actual city, but their population does not count. What about Peters, Cranberry, Hopewell, Murrysville?

While the city itself may have lost half of their population since 1975, the Pittsburgh MSA has NOT, it is fairly the same, if not a bit more people. So please, if you are going to use demographics, understand what the demographics mean.
 
One thing that is NOT a factor in attending sporting events, in fact is way, way, way, down the list is ticket prices. Cost. Look at the Pens, some single tickets cost the same as an entire Pitt season ticket. Steelers can raise ticket prices another 20% and it won't affect them.

People want to go see winners. And you can say "well we are 8-3" and yes, that is good, but how many years are we not 8-3? And still, what has Pitt really won? We aren't ranked in a top 25 (whether we should or shouldn't is debatable, but we aren't). Excitement is growing, a Notre Dame is a draw, but they are the only real draw at home this year. In fact, no one in the Coastal division "moves the needle" with the local sports fans. So Pitt is going to have to do this on their own.

We saw in our best attendance year, 2003, the perfect storm or recipe. Preseason buzz. A killer home schedule (ND and then Top 5 opponents VT and Miami). NIGHT GAMES!!! A Heisman Candidate. 2002 set up 2003. Perhaps 2015 sets up 2016 with PSU here (record crowd for sure) and likely a preseason top 25 ranking.

Pitt has effed around for 30 years. People go to events because they feel compelled to, out of habit. It is not habitual behavior right now for casual sports fans to go attend a Pitt game. LIke it is the 3 pro teams. Things can change some. I worked from home yesterday, and with the Steeler bye week the talk 90% of the day was college football and mostly Pitt. Pitt getting some buzz and momentum. The problem has been, everytime Pitt football starts reeling people in, it "pitts itself". I think these things are changing, but there still are skeptics.
 
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UOTE="recruitsreadtheseboards, post: 550685, member: 2328"]One thing that is NOT a factor in attending sporting events, in fact is way, way, way, down the list is ticket prices. Cost. Look at the Pens, some single tickets cost the same as an entire Pitt season ticket. Steelers can raise ticket prices another 20% and it won't affect them.

People want to go see winners. And you can say "well we are 8-3" and yes, that is good, but how many years are we not 8-3? And still, what has Pitt really won? We aren't ranked in a top 25 (whether we should or shouldn't is debatable, but we aren't). Excitement is growing, a Notre Dame is a draw, but they are the only real draw at home this year. In fact, no one in the Coastal division "moves the needle" with the local sports fans. So Pitt is going to have to do this on their own.

We saw in our best attendance year, 2003, the perfect storm or recipe. Preseason buzz. A killer home schedule (ND and then Top 5 opponents VT and Miami). NIGHT GAMES!!! A Heisman Candidate. 2002 set up 2003. Perhaps 2015 sets up 2016 with PSU here (record crowd for sure) and likely a preseason top 25 ranking.

Pitt has effed around for 30 years. People go to events because they feel compelled to, out of habit. It is not habitual behavior right now for casual sports fans to go attend a Pitt game. LIke it is the 3 pro teams. Things can change some. I worked from home yesterday, and with the Steeler bye week the talk 90% of the day was college football and mostly Pitt. Pitt getting some buzz and momentum. The problem has been, everytime Pitt football starts reeling people in, it "pitts itself". I think these things are changing, but there still are skeptics.[/QUOTE]

"People want to go see winners"..Pitt goes 11-0 for two straight years and that only add about 10,000 per.. need to brush up on your Pitt history...I was in my prime in late 70's early 80's during a period of "habitual" success and was at the games at Pitt Stadium...it is what it is and what it always has been...only thing I can see changing it is some how having a Pitt game be the "in-thing" to do socially (sort of like the local celebs and athelets showing up at Pitt basketball sellouts several years ago)..not sure how that is accomplished though.
 
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