Attendance
Prior to 1966, attendance figures were based on the total in the house. The largest crowd to attend a home game prior to expansion was 61,296 on October 6, 1962, against Purdue. Since 1966, attendance figures have been based on paid admissions with a fixed number of tickets available, accounting for the familiar 59,075 figure through the 1996 season. Until Ara Parseghian arrived as coach at Notre Dame in 1964, sellouts were not the norm. Since then, tickets to a Notre Dame football game have been notoriously hard to come by. As of the conclusion of the 2010 season, there have been 219 consecutive sellouts at Notre Dame Stadium, and 257 sellouts in the past 258 games dating back to 1966. The lone exception was a 1973 game against Air Force which had been moved midseason by ABC to Thanksgiving Day and was played with the students absent. The announced attendance was 57,235. Attendance at all five home games in 1965 exceeded 59,000 as well.
The official capacity was listed at 80,225 when the stadium was first expanded. A subsequent computer revision put it at 80,012 in 1998 and 80,232 in 2000. Sideline bleachers, which had been removed during expansion, were put back in after a few years, bringing the figure to its present 80,795 in 2001.
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Famous quotes containing the word attendance:
“We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)