Week 9 in the Big Ten: U-California-LA dreamin’ of big crowds

There were 95,421 people watching Big Ten football in person in California on Saturday.

Only about a quarter of them were at the Rose Bowl.

Okay, I get it: the Bruins were only playing an out-of-conference Nevada squad. But the team is 6-0 going in and it drew a paltry 24,611 to the game. The other 70,810 people were watching USC take down Ohio State at the Coliseum….in the rain.

As far as attendance in the Big Ten is concerned, the rich get richer and the poor are really poor. The Rose Bowl was less than a third full; Maryland was just a bit over half full, and that’s the announced crowd. Rutgers’ numbers keep going down, with a stated attendance of 39,540.

At the other end of the spectrum, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Oregon were at or over capacity, and I tend to believe the count. I don’t think that Iowa even bothers counting – they just say it’s at capacity. And it probably is.

But, even in the Big Ten, a lot of schools – and not just those struggling on the field – are seeing downward trends in attendance. d1.Ticker has a lot of data, and this week’s table (which appears to be a week behind based on RU’s attendance) shows that 11 of the 18 Big Ten schools have been trending downward, to some extent, for the last five years. The two with the worst results: Rutgers and UCLA.

A national issue

Attendance at CFB is on a downward trend. Our John Catapano posted an item our The Feed about TCU, which just a few short years ago was playing for a national title.

TCU had 32,549 in their building for last Saturday’s game against Kansas; that’s about 71% capacity. The link was posted to show a lot of empty seats shortly before kickoff. It isn’t a good look for the Horned Frogs or for any P4 school. And its five year-over-year total is down just under 14%, not dissimilar to Rutgers.

There’s always TV, right?

It isn’t only in the stadium; CFB viewers are lower than before, with some explanation. The Athletic is reporting that the “boom” may be over, or at least lessening. The number of games with 10 million viewers is good, 22 compared to just eight two years ago. But, one reason why it is showing fewer viewers this season is that last season – 2025 – Nielsen made changes in how it analyzed/counted those numbers. It actually created increases last year, meaning that by comparison, this year looks worse, at least according to the article.

That change alone caused a 7.5 percent baseline bump for college football viewership, Nielsen said. But the 2025 season shot even beyond that, with a striking 11 percent growth across all networks.

But there is some bad news. Through the first eight weeks of this season, the 131 Nielsen-rated games on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN had an average of 3.3 million viewers. That’s down 6 percent from the same period in 2025, when 124 games averaged 3.5 million. Fox had more viewers, but it expanded its Friday schedule so it had more games to watch.

Now, bringing it home, at least on BTN: look at all the people who watched Rutgers….and Michigan.

Yes, the RU-Michigan game was the most watched game on BTN last Saturday. I know….on BTN. By the way, the “Regionalized Coverage” was Penn State-Purdue and, I believe, UCLA-Nevada; why On3’s report has it listed that way is unknown.

As for the Big Ten overall, it looked like this:

The games with the biggest numbers were a) the better teams in the conference and b) on the major networks. For those of you comparing tables – I know you’re out there – you’re saying, “Hey, Bob, what about Oregon-Northwestern and UCLA-Nevada? Their numbers?” The Ducks and Wildcats were on Peacock, so no Nielsen numbers. As for the Bruins, it was on BTN at 1 pm local, meaning it was likely in the 4:15 regional window. Not sure, but it seems to fit.