The students? Not so much.”īut there are three statistics that explain this phenomenon entirely on their own.įirst, NU’s undergraduate population is only about 8,100 the Big Ten’s second-smallest is 20,800 (Nebraska). “The university and the donors has shown its support for the program. “The larger issue for Fitz and the football program … is the apathy towards athletics at Northwestern,” Rich wrote Wednesday. Not only does NU rank in the bottom quartile of FBS power-conference teams in overall attendance - its average of 35,853 last year ranked 58th among 65 such teams - but the student section is often the emptiest part of the stadium, with only roughly a quarter to a third of it filled (based on the eye test) on average days.
It’s true: student attendance at NU football games objectively lags well behind the rest of the Big Ten, and it can certainly seem like student interest in the football team lags behind the rest of the conference, as well.
And besides, considering the University’s inevitable disadvantages, it actually fares decently well (and far better than it used to) in the attendance department. NU is too small, geographically diverse and known for academics to ever replicate its Big Ten rivals’ fan support. Davis Rich of Inside NU was the latest to fall into that trap, writing in his Wednesday column that this university needs a student body “football culture” to match its sudden winning ways and ultra-fancy new facilities.įor numerous reasons, that vision is unfortunately yet simply not attainable. This nuance is frequently misunderstood by national commentators, fellow student journalists and even Fitzgerald himself. Many others - a roughly proportionate percentage of the overall population, compared to other Big Ten schools - do care. Yes, many are, but that’s true everywhere. The myth that NU students and alumni are apathetic about football is both true and false. That one is not, and we collectively need to stop believing that it could be. The student section, despite a capacity (5,000) that holds a ridiculous 60 percent of the student body, is packed to the brim and loudly cheering.Īll of that is probably realistic except for the last sentence. will earn a $1.5 million bonus if he completes 25 touchdown passes, and some of those will go to a tight end that Northwestern still oddly refuses to label as that. A grizzled, white-haired, Bill Snyder-lookalike Pat Fitzgerald roams the Wildcats’ sidelines.