In some ways this is the best of times for Miami football. We play on ESPN for the second time this year. We also played on NBC and every game is televised in some way. We have 6 home games including home vs UC. We are the defending champs of the league and have a shot to repeat and almost assuredly in a bowl game
But in the Massey Ratings we are 81 and only 2 power 4 schools are below us (purdue and stanford)
My sense is Miami football after ww2 until the early 80s was more competitive in the national stage when I look back at those computer ratings. But maybe that is just bad math. Heck in the 1960s Penn State had crowds in the 30-50k range while we were probably 5-14k range. How did our students view us back then. How about locals?
I am just trying to get the proper perspective
I went to school in the late 80s/early 90s and I would say MAC football is pretty equivalent to then. The MAC was probably at its height in my lifetime between the late 90s to about 8 years ago
Much like those that say you can’t compare players from different eras in football, baseball, basketball, I think it is increasingly difficult to compare eras of football teams as well. The entire landscape of college sports has drastically and dramatically changed since the 1970s/1980s/1990s. NIL, portal, open buying of talent, the huge disparity in resources. This entire system is now set up more now than ever to separate the haves from the have nots.
In the early 70’s, average football attendance was about 19,000 in a stadium holding about 14,000. It was a completely different atmosphere than today. You could make a lot of noise stomping on those metal grandstands. A student needed to get there by noon for a 1pm game, or there would be no seats left in the student section!
Pretty much the same in mid to late 60’s. An hour before game time was the target arrival time. Fraternities would send people to block off sections for members and their dates. My friends and I would often just sit in the middle of an empty “blocked off “ section if we wanted those seats. It was fun to ask the pledges just what they were going to do to stop us. Fortunately we were well enough known that we were not challenged.
Admittedly this was a smaller stadium, but it was a happening. Harassment of the visitors was an art form. The band was merciless to the opponents. Of course, t v games were few, hell, t v’s were few. The crowd left the game and as one streamed to various bars. Back to the dining halls for dinner, then back to the bars.
O U o and 10, we don’t think you’ll ever win was the favorite crowd chant I started. Man did that piss them off.
My date and I were part of the homecoming section my senior year. They were way too quiet. Couldn’t wait to get back w the “real “ fans the next game. Our fans and band became the reason NIU’s coach later begged the MAC to change the position of the visiting team to the other sideline away from the band and students. He (Joe Novak) was a friend of mine and a player at Miami.
Agree with OcalaHawk. Look at the 73-74-75 teams. The '74 team was 10-1, 10th in the country and had (I think) the 4th ranked total defense in the country that only gave up 76 points all year! Games were sold out and crazy. Students actually came to games in mass…no cable or pitcher count downs up town. Teams were on a roll. Now you get 16,000 and Yeager is one third empty. Students don’t come like they did. The sell outs creates an atmosphere you just don’t get with half full. Think UC this year for most of the game. It was exciting. The teams are typically good but not great. I think maybe they’re a lot more affluent these days and somehow that has something to do with it. There 6-7000 more students but it sure doesn’t show up in the stands. Just a new era. Things change.
This is terrific -keep it coming. Wikipedia is sporadic with old attendance numbers but what is it shows way larger crowds starting in the late 70s and early 80s
I know the Yager Stadium crowds from like 1987 on. We certainly have way smaller crowds than the old days. But this parents weekend I thought the crowd was larger than reported. This years seems to be the first year we aren’t exaggerating crowds over the paid/student attendance
Our collective remembrances of old Miami Field in the 1970’s were probably a little skewed because of the atmosphere and small stadium size (old Miami Field capacity was 14,900). Not all games were sold out, but there were only 20 rows of seats on the student size, and typically it would be full or close to it, and you did have to get to the game early for a decent seat.
After the great years in the 70’s, Miami continued to field very good teams but the MAC lost its Tangerine Bowl slot until the Cal Bowl I. Fresno came along in the early 80’s. There was a lot of nostalgia for the old stadium before Yager was built, and in the last year in 1982 there were many over capacity crowds. I lived in Denver in those days but came back for the homecoming game against BG in 1982, and as I recall we had a crowd over 18,000. It was also televised regionally by CBS.
Then , in the early days of Yager we had numerous crowds over 20K, and our mid 80’s teams were very good until Tim Rose ran us into the ground in the late 80’s But then in the 90’s we had many excellent teams under Randy Walker, knocking off 2-3 ranked teams in that era. Despite that, we could t seem to win the MAC (for our line bowl slot), and thus many of our best teams in school history (like the 10-1 team in 1998) didn’t even get a bowl opportunity.
Our next Renaissance were the Big Ben years, and of course Yager was packed for that 2003 year with an average home attendance of 25,000 a game. Unfortunately, as has been chronicled here previously, we failed to Capitalize on the Big Ben era and went into a long funk, as did our attendance.
So if the student side was only 20 rows high at old Miami field then I am guessing the student side capacity was about 5,000. Not including end zone seats
Miami can draw OK, provided that it is an interesting opponent, weather is good and MU is playing competitively.
Back in the 90s, the Red & White were very competitive and fun to watch, the student section at Yager was aluminum bleachers on the opponent’s side, the game was usually broadcast on the radio so it moved along pretty quickly, and there weren’t as many options to compete with going to the game (meaning, the Buckeyes had the 3pm game on ABC, while Miami had the 12pm in-person game). Other options were ESPN2’s CFB game of the week, and Jefferson-Pilot’s game of the week on the local UHF channel,
They still had attendance issues, and Miami once had a controversial sweepstakes, with a game attendance “punch card”; a student could win a semester’s worth of tuition if they went to as many home games and had their card punched, with the drawing at the end of the season. I think they also had a promo where you could get in for free with a losing Ohio Lottery ticket, too…
It was pretty fun, of course, nostalgia being everything.
You picked the only two schools that have had consistent student attendance in the MAC, and even those two are down overall. Student attendance is down at most programs.
OU has had some horrible student attendance this season for football.
Yes, forgive me for cherry picking. Mea culpa, mea culpa. But I am not about to sugar coat Miami student attendance. The point is, there are fans who support mid major teams. Just not Miami students. And as we all know, Miami is now bowl eligible for the last several years. So the product on the field is winning. Albeit not always how we would like (see UC result this year), but nonetheless a winning product.
5,000 for the student side sounds about right, RedSea. (I used to have all that memorized but can’t specifically recall anymore). The home side had 30 rows, and there were wooden bleachers in both end zones.
It’d be interesting to track the evolution of social media platforms as well as the launch of the i-Phone against attendance figures over the years.
Also, back in the day, there were considerably more Saturday afternoon home games starting at 1 P.M… so you could catch a game and go party afterwards…Now, it’s hard to create any habits because games start at all time of the day…and then dreaded November arrives with night games, colder weather and that convoluted combo makes it hard to develop habits of attending games at "around the same time when Miami is at home.
Meanwhile the only habit that seems to prevail is uptown…long time ago, it was Al & Larry’s, The CI and a couple more places that usually filled up pretty fast after the games ended. Today, hitting Brick Street early seems to be the habit and, once you get “uptown” few want to leave to attend a 3 o’clock game…
The old Miami Field location right on High Street made attending a game very easy. Yager is a fine facility, the location not perfect. I always wonder what other locations Miami considered when planning for a new football stadium back in the early 80s.
I dont think you can look at MAC attendance figures seriously. Sometimes schools will get pepsi to buy 10,000 tickets at a reduced rate and inflate numbers.
In 2019 Miami announced 23,000 for a Tuesday night November vs Akron and 20,000 for the BG game the week before. My daughter was a Shako that year and I went to the Bg game which was icy and snowing so they didnt even let people on the student side. If there were 5,000 people there I would be surprised - if there were 250 students there i would be surprised
