Syracuse Football Had Biggest Drop in Attendance Among Power 5 Schools in 2015

Back in November when I wrote that Syracuse Orange football attendance was historically-bad, I wasn't being hyperbolic. This was the worst home-attended season in the history of the Carrier Dome. If you're looking for reasons beyond wins and losses that Scott Shafer was fired, this is where you start.

Now we've got the numbers to back up just how bad it was in the Dome this year. Per CBS Sports, Syracuse had the biggest attendance drop of any P5 school in 2015.

The biggest decreases in the Power Five: Syracuse (21 percent), Kansas (20 percent), Oregon State (14 percent), Northwestern (14 percent), Boston College (13 percent), UCLA (13 percent), Florida State (11 percent), North Carolina (9 percent) and Miami (9 percent).

As Nate Mink spells it out, Syracuse went from averaging 40,447 fans per game last year to 32,102 fans per game this season. This data does not include the Notre Dame game is based on announced attendance, not actual. So of course, both numbers are probably actually lower.

Sure there are overarching reasons that attendance was rough across the board for college football programs. But Syracuse is coming off of a season when attendance went up. As I've always thought, attendance is almost always based on how well the team did the previous year. So last year's 3-9 team benefitted from the excitement of the previous year's bowl run while this year's 4-8 team felt the brunt of disappointment left over by it's predecessor.

That might mean 2016 will be abysmal but a new coach always brings with him fresh hope and generates excitement in the fanbase. Doug Marrone's first home game was a 14K bump from the previous year's attendance. Expect Dino's first game to see a bit of an uptick as well, though after that he's gonna have to earn it.