UVA Football coach Tony Elliott told reporters on Tuesday that his kids “need the crowd to show up and be loud” for this weekend’s matchup with Virginia Tech, with an ACC Championship Game spot on the line for the ‘Hoos.
Bad news on that front: our sources are telling us that ticket sales for the Saturday primetime game have been surprisingly sluggish, with one suggesting that we might be lucky to get to the 50,000 mark.
That would be utterly depressing – all that money spent to get a winner on the field, they’re winning, to the point where they’re a game away from a chance to play their way into the College Football Playoff, and they might still be playing in front of a wide swath of empties.
This, as I’m continuing to hear that, even with no contract on file as of yet, it’s still a near-certainty that the 2026 season opener with NC State is going to be moved from Charlottesville to Brazil, I would assume for a big payout.
If we can’t get 50K in the house Saturday night, go ahead and play in Brazil.
Seriously.
The program brought in right at $1.5 million per home game in ticket sales last season, per the sports-finance database maintained by Sportico.
Shouldn’t be hard to get at least a $2 million guarantee for a game in a foreign country.
To that point, the guarantee for the UVA-West Virginia game in Charlotte next September is $2 million, and if the game is a sellout, the payout gets to $3.31 million.
I raised that stink last week when the first reports about Brazil first surfaced, to the effect that, to me, moving another home game to a neutral site for cash comes across as a double-middle finger to the fan base.
But now, as we’re learning about sluggish ticket sales for the biggest game to ever be played at Scott Stadium – ACC title game berth and a shot at the CFP on the line – man, if we can’t get folks to show up for a game with those stakes, what are we even doing here?
We haven’t had a sellout or even 60,000 in the stadium since 2008; this year, we’re averaging 47,100 per, getting past 50,000 for the past three (Florida State: 50,107; Washington State: 56,048; Wake Forest: 55,568).
I think we end up getting past 50K again, but that’s a low bar, considering.
“I think the crowd has evidence of their impact on the game in several of the games. They’ve caused some havoc for the opposing offenses in some key times,” Elliott said, referencing, I would imagine, the run of false starts in the fourth quarter of the Wazzu game that led to the game-winning safety in the 22-20 dub.
Florida State also had some issues with crowd noise in the fourth quarter and OTs in the 46-38 double-OT UVA win.
“We need the crowd to be there, we need the energy to be evident, because we’re going to have to play the four quarters,” Elliott said. “I think ideally you want to get off to a fast start, but this is going to be a four-quarter game, and we’re anticipating that it’s going to come down to one possession, regardless of what everybody else else may think. It’s a very, very capable football team, and they still have talent in that locker room, and they’re going to be motivated. They’re going to be motivated for those guys who, this is their last game, and they want to go out on top. They’re going to be motivated because I’m sure they have a certain mindset relative to this to this rivalry, and rightfully so, they’ve earned that. We got to change that mindset.”
Got to change that mindset, indeed.
Get your asses out there and yell your fool heads off for three-and-a-half hours.
That, or stop whining to me about how we can’t have good things.
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Chris Graham
