The Monday before Ohio State’s spring game, head coach Urban Meyer issued a public challenge to fans of the Ohio State football program.
“I’m appealing to our fans to come out and support us, for a lot of reasons,” Meyer said. “There’s nothing like performing in front of 100,000 people. It’s supposed to be great weather so I’m hoping we get 100,000 people.”
Approximately 69,000 tickets for OSU’s spring game had been sold by mid-afternoon Wednesday; by the same time of day Friday, that number had jumped to 77,000 -- and those numbers didn’t include student tickets. With the sun shining and the mid-April temperatures approaching 70 degrees in Columbus, the fans rose to the coach’s challenge, with 100,189 patrons showing up at the Horseshoe for the Buckeyes’ spring finale. That number is a new national record for a spring game, breaking the mark of 99,391 set by OSU at last year’s game.
Any suspense over whether a record would be broken was mostly lost prior to the game as, roughly three hours before “kickoff,” the school sent out a press release announcing “Ohio Stadium will be at capacity for today’s LiFE Sports Spring Game, presented by Nationwide, and there are no more tickets available for purchase.” Capacity at the ‘Shoe incidentally, is 104,944.THANK YOU FANS! #GoBucks 💯K 💪 in #TheShoe! pic.twitter.com/FwGViPTXkc
— Ohio State Buckeyes (@OhioStAthletics) April 16, 2016
.@OhioStAthletics 💯k in #TheShoe #GoBucks pic.twitter.com/g1kd9n2RZZ
— Brutus Buckeye (@Brutus_Buckeye) April 16, 2016