8306 was the attendance in 2018 home playoff game. This looks less than that by a lot. Hopefully a surprisingly big student show out helps. Keep inviting people. Surprising given the mostly solid to above average attendance this year.

Why was attendance so strong for MSU? #4 vs #2? 5 PM start time didn't compete w kids activities?

good promotional efforts. An actual “championship” game and 3,000 Montana state fans.

For what it's worth, I was able to donate to buy tickets for students in a link in this article. Hopefully the kids show up.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/opponent-set-dec-7-playoff-football-game

I’m not gonna lie the amount of students I’ve talked to on campus who are stressed about finals and don’t plan on going is not the most encouraging…

I talked to a young man at Philz last week, same thing. Finals.

I don't think we're magically going to get a huge influx of sales here a couple days before the game. Disappointing, but the reality of how athletics are regarded at UC Davis. Hopefully those who do make it to the game are at least loud as hell though I'm not going to hold my breath for that either.

I think its kinda just the honest reality of going to a school where academics are basically everything... which is great but also I think most students could take a few hours off studying to go to the football game instead of scrolling tik tok.. im 20 and sound 90 but still.

“ I think its kinda just the honest reality of going to a school where academics are basically everything”
Exactly. This I’m sure is the biggest reason we struggle with attendance. Kids go to UC Davis for a solid education. For non athletes, the desire to attend sporting venues is down on the objective list.

It seems obvious that the heavy focus on academics connects to the whole struggle to have people understand who we are playing, and even more getting people into the seats. Our social media team has KILLED it recently in my opinion, but attendance isnt booming or something. I also think from people that I've talked to, that the whole fbs vs fcs thing confuses the hell out of people (which again goes back to most students not being very involved in athletics). The amount of folks who hear that were in the playoffs and then ask why we are not playing the likes of oregon would surprise you. Granted, if we played oregon I dont know how much better attendance would be hypothetically during finals week, but its an interesting distinction to have all the graphics say "d1" playoffs and then potentially play southeastern Missouri State not cal or arkansas. Dont think moving to fbs would necessarily solve our attendance woes (see our basketball attendance even though all d1 conferences are simply that, d1) but its an interesting thing to think about public perception wise.

Have you noticed the empty seats at all of the FCS playoff games on TV? There were 3220 at the Richmond game.

the most wild thing for me is that the attendance for lots of fcs playoff games are low... but they also have like 3k-17k students compared to our 40k...blows my mind sometimes when I think about the size of this school haha

Actually i did notice. As jdur mentioned, many of those schools are relatively small compared to Davis. Maybe the montanas and dakotas are just the exception when it comes to attendance (and support).

Even Montana had empty seats it was only about half of capacity.

Bob Dunning takes the Aggies by 10:

AGGIES over ILLINOIS STATE ... Make no mistake, this is a very good Illinois State team coming in here on Saturday afternoon. But what an opportunity for Aggie fans to see the first home playoff game since 2018. This one will be a battle from start to finish. Take the Ags by 10.

FCS PLAYOFFS: Montana State over Tennessee-Martin, Idaho over Lehigh, South Dakota State over Montana, Incarnate Word over Villanova, Mercer over Rhode Island, North Dakota State over Abilene Christian, and South Dakota over Tarleton State.

https://www.thewaryone.com/p/take-the-broncos-the-ducks-the-dawgs?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2582284&post_id=152598899&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=31ratq&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I know when they were trying to figure out my ticket situation, the number of blocks of 4 seats were very limited in the Team Aggie section. I can’t really tell from the color chart how crowed the sections are going to be. Hopefully the students come out for a 3 hour study break of a brisk fall day!

Our student body now is almost 40% or more Chinese, many on student visas. American football isn't part of their culture, nor drinking, Greek life, local rivalries, etc.

Add to that about 8,000 students in post graduate school - serious students.

Davis is 58% women students. International students make up 17% of the student body, so the density of preexisting football fans is low.
Davis prides itself on its admitting 37% first generation college students, so many have no family tradition of being a fan of college sports in general

maybe start telling people a playoff game is +10 social credit points.

put a tarrif on tickets sold to Sac State fans and call it a day. Sorry I couldn't help it.

demographics at Berkeley are similar but they get a whole lot more students there. I think having the frats near the stadium and a tradition of frat/sorority kids attending brings alot more of the students to the game.

Davis went multiple decades with a no sorority policy due to some vote of the women students in the sixties..

If you want to get women to games it needs to be a social event. UCLA had a parent’s weekend and the Sorority chartered a bus to go to the game with parents. So the girls, boy friends and parents all went.

I don't think the in-state Asian population has changed much since I was there in the late 90s. It's the percentage of international (primarily Chinese) and Hispanic students that has increased. About 10% (3044 kids) of the total student population are international students from China, which is up significantly from ~0.3% (56 kids) in 2000. Regardless, let's get these kids to this game!

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/fall-enrollment-glance

I could be wrong, but it looks like tickets are starting to move. Biggest difference between now and MSU seems to be General Admission still available, and it looks like StubHub has a large chunk of tickets.

If it's near gametime and there is any room left, I'd let another 1-2,000 students in standing room only, no charge. FILL THE HOUSE. Some students will leave at halftime (Finals).

https://clk.ucdavisaggies.com/e/es?s=3006164&e=2940&elqTrackId=efd74c1a1b7a40299e524d6e5aa03bea&elq=6b497da9f0d341e888473bda1c80bf5f&elqaid=194&elqat=1&elqak=8AF597C3EA90F9163D32C32CA36EB08D168555E6105FA74D3C255179FDF262DBB030

500 tickets purchased by donor. Link above has them.

it’s an NCAA-run event so no freebies. They’d have to claim one of the tickets purchased as donations.

I have absolutely no clue as to why the current student body is not attending such a big game, but I do remember that it was impossible to get a seat at Toomey Field when I was there if you arrived just before kickoff. I wonder if the past availability of seats simply means that a lot of students plan to just show up on game day? It will be sad if a campus with 30,000+ students can't fill the stadium.

Any guesses on tickets sold vs actual attendees? It probably would have been way worse last weekend even with finals.