The most recent UVA Football home game had an announced attendance of 32,688, and the four home games to date in 2024 are averaging 38,284 – 62.2 percent of the 61,500-seat capacity at Scott Stadium.
Do the players and coaches notice the sea of empty seats when they’re out there warming up, running through the tunnel, trying to whip up the crowd on big plays?
Oh, yeah.
“We’re all in this thing together,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott told reporters on Tuesday at his weekly presser. “We do it for them, and we want to show the progress we’re making. We’re striving for perfection, even though we know it can’t be attained. We’re going to play hard and put on the best show we possibly can. We would love for as many fans to be there to cheer us on.”
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That’s the message going into this weekend’s game with North Carolina (3-4, 0-3 ACC), with the Cavaliers (4-3, 2-2 ACC) desperately in need of a fifth win, to get one win closer to six and bowl eligibility.
Virginia is a four-point favorite, but Vegas typically factors in three to three and a half points as being a factor of home-field advantage, which stems from factors including, most notably, crowd noise that can lead to snap infractions and issues changing plays at the line of scrimmage by the opposing offense.
Even at empties in the range of 20,000 to 25,000, the impact of noise from the home fans is diminished, as we saw on the final drive from Louisville two weeks ago, when the Cardinals, down 20-17 in the fourth quarter, were able to get into the red zone and put up the game-winning score in the final two minutes without doing much to disturb the neighbors.
The Louisville offense was driving into the closed end of the stadium, which years ago, when there were routinely 60,000-plus in the stadium, would have been an impenetrable din of sound.
The 30,000-plus who were still around for the fourth quarter did their level best, which explains all the sore throats in Central Virginia the next morning, but still, it’s just not the same.
“I know we’re doing everything we possibly can to put the best product on the field. These guys work extremely hard. They’ve shown improvement over the last couple years,” Elliott said. “I know the athletic department is doing everything they can. There has been a lot of improvements to the stadium, gameday atmosphere. There is a lot to be excited about.”
We’ll forgive Elliott for missing on that last point; he’s down on the sidelines on gameday, and thus isn’t aware of the issues with concession stands running out of the barely edible food, the weird rules limiting fan movement on The Hill, the poor WiFi connectivity constraining fan interaction, and the intolerable lack of access to parking and issues with traffic ingress and egress around the stadium.
These are all things that are fixable, but they’re also all issues that have been issues for years, with no progress, or any discernible effort, toward resolving them.
ICYMI: UVA Football attendance woes
- UVA Football: What it costs to play in a half-full stadium, and who pays the bill
- Another Saturday with 20K-plus empties at a UVA Football home game
- UVA Football: There’s a way to get the fans back. It starts with an apology.
- UVA Football: How about a ‘We Want You Back’ campaign to get the fans back?
- Another Saturday with 20K-plus empties at a UVA Football home game
- UVA Football: The empty seats in Scott Stadium are a Carla Williams problem
At least the football team is doing its part – four wins already, after back-to-back three-win seasons in the first two years of Elliott’s tenure.
Why he decided on a complete teardown of a program that had played in an Orange Bowl two years before he was hired is something that only he and Athletics Director Carla Williams can explain, but, that’s done, he’s got things moving in the right direction.
The fans weren’t even out in great numbers during the Orange Bowl season in 2019, so, it’s not just about winning.
“My biggest message would be, we’re in this thing together. It takes all of us,” Elliott said. “Hopefully, we’ve shown that we’re going to work as hard as we can to do our part, and hopefully they can see that the athletic department is working as hard as they can and that we need them. We need folks to be in the stands, create an environment for the guys, and also make it tough on opponents.
“But the message is, we’re all in this thing together. We’re building a program. The fan base is just as much a part of the program as myself and the players that are here in this building,” Elliott said.
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Chris Graham
