Poorly Attended FCS Playoff Games, Is This Normal?

I went to the Georgia Southern Eagles playoff game against Central Arkansas yesterday and was shocked at how poorly attended the game was. There was an entire section of the stands on the visitor's side that was empty and even on the home side, there was a lot of empty space on the outer sections. Southern typically ranks in the top 10 nationally for football attendance in the FCS. One article I found was from 2010, Jeff Monken's first year as coach and their first year back in the playoffs after a few seasons of mediocrity. That year they were 6th in the nation in attendance and had been in the top 10 for the last 7 years straight despite having gone through 4 seasons of their worst football records outside 1996 in their modern era and no playoffs for four seasons, so this is not a team that struggles to draw a crowd. In fact, I attend a game or two every season and I have never seen the stadium this empty. When there are some open spaces in the stands, those empty seats are always well outnumbered by the people standing and sitting in the grass hills around the endzones. Not this time. The Appalachian State game this year sold out long before game day. The only options a week before the game were general admission grassy hill tickets.

And it wasn't the opponent. Central Arkansas won their conference and had a better record than Southern. They scored 27 points against Ole Miss earlier in the season. Why then would attendance to a playoff game be so low.

One final factor, the weather was 70 degrees and partly cloudy. It was literally the perfect weather for being outside.

TL/DR: Georgia Southern is one of the biggest football draws in the FCS but only filled about 3/4 of the seats for a playoff game against a good team that was likely the only home game of the playoffs for them. Why?