Coming off a successful postseason, the Big Ten now has something else to be proud of. When the spring football attendance numbers are finalized in the coming weeks, the odds are pretty good the top three spring attendance crowds will all come from the Big Ten.
Ohio State set the bar as high as possible by setting a spring game record with 99,391 Buckeye fans packing Ohio Stadium for the annual spring game on Saturday. That is not just an Ohio State record either. That is the national spring game record. That number surpassed the previous high this spring by Nebraska (76,881 fans). Before the day was done Penn State reported an estimated crowd of 68,000 in Beaver Stadium for the Blue White Game. Those numbers are good for the three highest spring crowds this year, and it might be enough to hold up for one more week..
The biggest threat to cracking the top three before the month is over might be Tennessee. The Vols had 68,500 fans at the spring game in 2014, which would be good enough to pass Penn State for third overall this year. Given the excitement surrounding the upward trend in Knoxville, there might be enough orange in Neyland Stadium to do just that.
Other schools still to play spring games from power conferences include Arkansas, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Michigan State, Iowa, UCLA, Utah Washington and Washington State, but the odds are none of those programs will manage to pull a crowd quite large enough. Wisconsin is also still on the schedule for next week, but the Badgers had just over 8,000 fans come to the final spring practice last spring.
Alabama (65,175) and Auburn (62,143) each had huge crowds but threats of inclement weather may have kept a few fans away from each respective spring game. Either way, the two Iron Bowl rivals round out the current top five in spring attendance. Michigan (60,000) follows for another Big Ten attendance mark.
No other school has reported a crowd over 49,000 this spring.
Here is the current numbers...
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