The announced attendance for the UVA Football home opener with Richmond on Saturday night was 40,811, but there weren’t nearly that many in the stadium at any point during the game.
The word circulating among the gameday operations staffers before kickoff was that they were told to expect closer to 25,000.
A late push – very late, as the photo I’m using with the story suggests, because you can see the band on the field moments before the national anthem – might have gotten us over the 30,000 mark.
In any case, even at 40,811, that would be 20,000-plus empties for the season opener, again.
UVA Football
- The UVA kids, during this weather delay, weren’t on their phones: But they were hungry
- Scott German: Observations from UVA’s 34-13 season-opening win over Richmond
- Final: UVA waits out thunder, lightning, dispatches Richmond in opener, 34-13
The 2023 home opener with JMU drew 56,508, thanks in part to JMU Nation making the trek to the big-boy stadium.
There’s your outlier.
The 2022 opener, also with Richmond in town, drew 41,122.
The 2021 opener, with William & Mary, had 42,982 in the stands.
COVID wrecked the 2020 season in terms of attendance, so moving to 2019, it was William & Mary, and 45,250 in the house.
That was for a team that was coming off eight wins in 2018, and would go on to win nine and play in the Orange Bowl.
Richmond, the opening opponent in 2018, had 40,524.
Seeing the pattern here?
Carla Williams was hired in the fall of 2017 from the University of Georgia, and among the things we were sold on with her appointment was, she’s from the SEC, where they play big-boy football.
For the credit she deserves for the Master Plan, the $80 million football ops center and the new 6,700-square-foot scoreboard that you can see from the dark side of the moon, we’re still not putting butts in seats.
Tony Elliott isn’t lighting the world on fire in his first stint as a head coach, putting up back-to-back three-win seasons in his first two years at UVA, but you have to wonder what goes through his head when he walks out of the tunnel minutes before kickoff and is confronted by yet another sea of empties, after years of coaching in front of 80,000-plus down in Death Valley.
“I really want to thank the students. The students showed up, and they covered The Hill. Appreciate the fans that showed up. I really appreciate the students and the fans that came back two hours and 18 minutes in a pretty bad storm, right. A lot of folks decided to come back,” Elliott said after the 34-13 win Saturday night.
That’s the other part to this story. For the second straight year, the opener had a weather delay, this one a shade over the two-hour mark.
While you can’t blame people for not sticking around to wait it out, given what we all saw on the radar, maybe a couple of thousand were around when the teams came back onto the field around 9 p.m.
It’s hard to imagine that Williams and her staff have been at the wheel for going on seven years now, and haven’t been able to make a dimple, much less a dent, in the fractured relationship with the UVA Football fan base.
“I appreciate all the faithful there, and we understand that we want to fill the entire stadium, so we’re going to do our part,” Elliott said, hitting at what should be the obvious, that winning games should get fans back, but even that isn’t the whole story.
The 2019 season, in which Virginia won nine games, and beat FSU and Virginia Tech at home, saw an average of 47,863 fans a game at Scott Stadium, which has an official capacity of 61,500, and once accommodated 64,947, for the 2008 season opener with Southern Cal.
The 2019 numbers tell us that even getting a winner in the stadium won’t necessarily get the fans back.
As much as you’d think that would be a sore point for Elliott, he puts on the brave face.
“Scott Stadium has a chance to be one of the best venues in the ACC in all the country. We’re going to do our part to make sure that we put an exciting product,” Elliott said after the opener, looking ahead to the next home game, in Week 3, in prime time, against former ACC rival Maryland.
“Man, we want to see Scott Stadium full when we show back up here in a couple weeks,” Elliott said.
As much as we all do, it won’t be, and that’s a problem for Carla Williams.
Video: Carla Williams needs to figure out the empty-seats problem
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Chris Graham
