Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck insists the team's plunging attendance doesn't concern him, but the announced crowd numbers this fall showed some of the steepest declines in the nation.
And the numbers counting actual fans in attendance are even worse.
According to that data, obtained this week by the Star Tribune, TCF Bank Stadium was less than half full for five of the team's seven home games.
The Gophers' average announced attendance was 37,914, their lowest since Jim Wacker's first season as coach in 1992.
And that's announced attendance, or tickets distributed, not the actual number of tickets scanned at the turnstiles. The official scanned ticket numbers show the Gophers' actual average attendance was 22,656.
The Gophers announced a crowd of 41,291 for their opener against New Mexico State, for example, but the number of scanned tickets was 20,218. In four of the following home games, actual attendance was fewer than 23,000 in TCF Bank Stadium, which now has a capacity of 50,805.
Only three years ago, with a home schedule that included TCU, Nebraska and Wisconsin, the average announced attendance was 52,355, all but filling the stadium that whole season. So that average has dropped 14,440 since 2015.
Of the 65 Power Five teams, only one has suffered a bigger drop in that time — USC, with 20,784 fewer fans per game. The Trojans still have one home game left, with a big crowd expected for No. 3 Notre Dame. In terms of percentage, USC and the Gophers have had almost identical drops over that span: 27.6 percent.