How hard is it to show up and support your nationally ranked football team?
PublishedNovember 8, 2025 4:36 PM EST•UpdatedNovember 8, 2025 4:36 PM EST
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I don’t know what has gotten into me, but lately I’ve been the most vocal critic of fanbases being unable or unwilling to sell out their home stadium.
I’ve taken my fair share of shots this season at the Ole Miss Rebels either playing to a half-empty Vaught-Hemingway or begging the fans to show up to their conference night game, but today I’ve decided to focus my crosshairs further south.
The Miami Hurricanes have a notorious fanbase in the sense that they routinely have trouble filling the 65,000 seats that make up Hard Rock Stadium, regardless of the team’s record.
Sure, anyone can sell out a season opener at night against a top-ten Notre Dame team, but can you do it for a 3:30 conference game against 3-6 Syracuse?
This is a question the Canes tried to answer by practically giving away tickets to the game this week.
Four bucks to do just about anything in this day and age is pretty remarkable, but Miami fans could’ve seen their team play live and in person for the price of a large diet soda.
Did it work?
I’ll let you be the judge, but the early returns are dubious at best.
I showed you a game highlight from the end of the first quarter to show you I’m not cherrypicking a photograph from an hour and a half before gametime.
If I had to make a generous estimate, I’d say there are 40,000 fans in attendance for this one.
That’s kind of pathetic.
I know the Canes predictably blew a golden opportunity (once again) to grab the ACC by the balls, but this is still a team with an outside shot at the College Football Playoff and their fans couldn’t even bother showing up.
The fine folks on X are starting to take notice as well, proving I’m not alone in my assessment here.
Maybe it’s the fact that the stadium is 45 minutes away from campus on a good day, or it could be that there’s just a ton of other great stuff to do in South Florida on a weekend (it was 82 degrees earlier today when I walked the dogs).
Regardless, if this fanbase wants to wax poetically about their five rings and boast about how they’re one of college football’s bluebloods, they had better start acting like it.
Show up and support your top-25 football team or don’t; it makes no difference to me.
But the jokes about half-empty stadiums will continue until attendance improves.
I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.