Looking at student attendance at football, basketball and baseball at Tech lets you know the future for college athletics is dismal. I know they gripe about early kickoffs. But, they arrive late, don't fill their section, and leave early at football. At the basketball and baseball games I attend, and that is only a couple of each a year, I would estimate about 700 to 800 students were at this year's game with Wake in basketball and then at the baseball game on a lovely Saturday afternoon, maybe 100 students. In my four years at Tech, '73-'77, we were the first class in decades to go four years without a bowl game in football, basketball was really mediocre to bad, and for some reason the baseball team wore batting helmets in the field. With a much smaller student body than today attendance was much greater. The much higher male to female ratio accounts for some of that.
I also attend a lot of East Carolina events and their student numbers are drastically down in all three major sports. I counted less than 100 students in the student section at a recent Memphis-ECU basketball game. They draw very well for baseball and have a nationally ranked team this year, yet student attendance is a fraction of what it was 10 to fifteen years ago.
This decline will only increase. In our area the number of kids attending the public, local high school is down dramatically. They are in charter schools, private schools, home schools, early colleges, magnet programs, etc. In many of those schools athletic programs are smaller or non-existent. The number of teens that see Friday night as the place to socialize at football games, and even at basketball or baseball games, is down. The number of kids in marching band, drill teams, flag corps, etc. is down and you see those numbers declining now in some college bands. The 35,000 size colleges have enough students to still fill football sections with students. But, the percentage of kids who care is down and is likely to continue to decline.