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Dr. Saturday

Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:12 pm EST

Wait: How many people were at the ACC Championship game?

By Matt Hinton

Scroll down or click here for the Doc's weekly game day live blog.

Official attendance for Virginia Tech's win over Boston College in Tampa: 53, 927. That estimate seems rather ... high. ABC appeared reluctant to give us a full stadium shot, but nothing in that broadcast, nor in the above first quarter shot above, indicated Raymond James Stadium was more than 35-40 percent full, at best. The teams combined to sell less than 5,000 of their 20,000-ticket allotment. Credible reports indicated people were literally giving tickets away.

Capacity at Raymond James is just shy of 66,000. Conservatively, the attendance was probably less then 30,000. Realistically, probably less than 25,000. Pessimistically, you can probably go lower if you have a mind to. But that stadium did not make half of the official 80 percent capacity.

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23 Comments

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  1. Drew
    1. Posted by Drew Thu Sep 03, 2009 2:44 pm EDT

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    Wow, Guess everyone is at home watching the Alabama vs Florida game.
  2. zibby
    2. Posted by zibby Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:48 pm EDT

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    The ACC is a farking joke.
  3. KZ
    3. Posted by KZ Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:20 pm EDT

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    abc did a good job masking this, couldn't tell on tv. in all fairness, sec in atlanta, next door to both schools. big 12 great destination. usc/ucla home turf. if 40k were there, 35k were vt fans, they do travel.
  4. Peachy
    4. Posted by Peachy Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:56 pm EDT

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    Lots of imaginary friends at Raymond James today.
  5. Jorge D
    5. Posted by Jorge D Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:32 pm EDT

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    i think just the relatives of each player went to the game...
    ...i guess nobody else cared about the game...
  6. Daryl B
    6. Posted by Daryl B Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:01 pm EDT

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    When you have a league that is so far flung (Miami to Boston: The enitre east coast), this is what will happen. On top of 3 loss teams in the conference playing for the trophy and today's economy I am surprised that few even showed up.
  7. Fairness
    7. Posted by Fairness Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:10 pm EDT

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    This SEC Title Game was a farce. Since when should the team with the lesser winning record get to host the most important game of the year? What an abomination. If it had been in Tuscaloosa, guess who the winner would have been? No - don't guess - you already know, even if you are a Florida fan. Bama would still be undefeated. What a travesty. What a shame. A game of this level of importance, should not be decided by the 12th man - Home field advantage. If the SEC wants to be considered for real, then they need to consider neutral territory for their future games. I live in Washington, DC and have no real ties to either team. I'm now an Oklahoma or Texas or anybody but SEC fan, based on this sad excuse for a so called fair title game.
  8. Daryl B
    8. Posted by Daryl B Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:01 pm EDT

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    ACC admin needs to look at SEC model. SEC has sold out championships every year regardless of the foes. ACC has a problem and part of it is geographics that they did not compute when they expanded. The base is too far flung. Miami and Boston College are too far away (ask the non-revenue sports how they feel) and irrevelant to the conferences traditions to matter. Big mistake!! Now, they have an irrevelant business model that is incapable of ever succeeding. Remember, ACC is a basketball league first and foremost and the idiots in charge tried to make it a football conference. The result is in the stands today at Tampa.
  9. Pauline L
    9. Posted by Pauline L Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:03 pm EDT

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    Gainesville, FL to Atlanta, GA 331 miles
    Tuscaloosa AL to Atlanta, GA 200 miles
  10. SpartanDan
    10. Posted by SpartanDan Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:11 pm EDT

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    Fairness: You realize it's a neutral site, and actually closer to Alabama than it is Florida?
  11. TheDukester
    11. Posted by TheDukester Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:25 pm EDT

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    Fairness, it's great to see your brain-ectomy went so well. Congratulate the surgeons for me.
  12. alexcool1979
    12. Posted by alexcool1979 Thu Sep 03, 2009 2:50 pm EDT

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    They banked on either FSU or Miami being in the championship game, instead they got a team from Virginia and another from up north.
  13. Larry
    13. Posted by Larry Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:56 pm EDT

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    I can understand, the ACC has not been a very strong conference this year and can you really think of any ACC team that really deserves to go to the Orange Bowl this year. I know it may seem strange coming from a Hokies fan but let's face it, they were mediocre this year.
  14. just_a_regular_j0e
    14. Posted by just_a_regular_j0e Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:45 pm EDT

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    None if it matters. College football championships are not decided on the field. The voters/rankings decide who the champion is. On field play has nothing to do with anything. BCS=BS but nothing will change until the division of money changes. Stop going to useless bowl games and we can have a definitive champion for a change.
  15. HUh!!
    15. Posted by HUh!! Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:06 pm EDT

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    looks like most of the people from pict was the bands and the rest arena workers LOL!!!!
  16. Octavan64
    16. Posted by Octavan64 Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:43 pm EDT

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    Not the strongest conference, but the ACC went 6-4 against the mighty SEC and 3 of the 4 SEC wins were by Alabama and Florida...Take those two really good teams away and the mediocre ACC totally dominated the SEC...just an observation.
  17. ns
    17. Posted by ns Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:45 pm EDT

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    Observation: When the stadium is filled to less than 30% of capacity for your biggest game of the season, and the Doc's blog on Yahoo draws only 18 comments by the next day (including a few spammers plus one lost SEC nutcase who can't read a map), it's safe to say that your conference is not really playing with the big boys on the college football stage. BC should never have left the Big East, where they had oodles of outstanding regional rivalries in all sports, to play in a conference half a billion miles away solely for the sake of their football team.
  18. CuseFanInSoCal
    18. Posted by CuseFanInSoCal Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:48 pm EDT

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    While I love thinking up radical realignment plans, here's a simple one
    Penn State and BC to the Big East (the teams that play Big East football then split off into a new conference)
    USF to the SEC
    South Carolina back to the ACC
    This does a lot of useful things...
    1 - Puts all the major northeastern FBS schools in the Big East
    2 - Gets rid of that odd SEC outlier in the Carolinas
    3 - Gives Florida a game against the second-best team in Florida
    4 - Gets the Big Ten back to ten teams, so they can adopt the Pac 10 model and play a nine-game, round-robin schedule
    5 - Gets the Big East to nine teams, so they can play an eight game schedule like most FBS conferences
    6 - Means Penn State is regularly playing Pitt and Syracuse again (and when Turner Gill leads us out of the wilderness, that will mean something...)
  19. Mittens
    19. Posted by Mittens Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:42 pm EDT

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    @ CuseFanInSoCal
    While I agree with your sentiment, why not just put USF into the ACC?
    Why is USC an odd SEC outlier in the Carolinas when Florida is not? There's one team in Arkansas, there's one team in the Carolinas, there's one team in Kentucky, and there's one team in Florida. Not sure why USC is the outlier.
    I think it would be a much more simple process to simply have Boston College and USF switch spots. The ACC already has Miami and FSU in Florida.
  20. achenrocker
    20. Posted by achenrocker Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:02 pm EDT

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    It's very simple, drop BC from the conference and add East Carolina and you have your geogrphic solution. BC doesn't travel that well, especially all the way down to Tampa. Originally the ACC didn't even want BC, they settled for them.
  21. MorrisD
    21. Posted by MorrisD Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:26 pm EDT

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    The crowd in that picture looks huge compared to the crowd in Arrowhead Stadium for the fourth quarter of the Big 12 Championship game Saturday night.
  22. Mike Z
    22. Posted by Mike Z Thu Sep 03, 2009 7:01 pm EDT

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    Yeah, the obvious problem is that from Blacksburg to Tampa its around 900 miles, which is a little far to expect college students to travel the weekend before exams start, forget getting students from BC there. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when the ACC braintrust decided title games far from 10 out of 12 of their teams was a good idea.
  23. Joshgator
    23. Posted by Joshgator Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:41 pm EDT

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    Fairness....it IS A NEUTRAL site game....it is held at the SAME DAMN LOCATION EVERY YEAR!!!!!! REGARDLESS OF WHO PLAYS IN THAT GAME....IF Georgia was playing in that game...it is in Georgia (albeit in Atlanta not Athens)...so would that make it a home game for Georgia...NOOOOOO...YOU ARE AN IDIOT!!!! Also, as mentioned above, Atlanta is closer to Tuscaloosa (the Tide's home city) than it is to Gainesville (UFs home city)....so if you were to claim one team as having the advantage as the home team (which it is ABSOLUTELY NOT AN ADVANTAGE FOR EITHER TEAM DUE TO IT BEING A NEUTRAL SITE...ONE THAT WAS SELECTED YEARS AGO AND USED EVERY YEAR), but if you were to claim one team as having a home advantage, that would be ALABAMA...and they LOST!!!!!

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