Stanford topples Cal in attendance capacity figure

The fine folks at College Football News recently sorted through all the data they could find and came up with a ranking of all 130 FBS teams based on their past five years worth of attendance data.

This, of course, comes at a time where we’re battling to get back onto the field amid a global pandemic that will likely shut down fans in the stands for the most part this fall, but still nevertheless very interesting to read.

Most importantly, Stanford fills the seats better than Cal.

What else can be learned from this data, though, is up for grabs.

The Stanford Cardinal football team ranked 10th in the Pac-12 in total football attendance per game over the past five years, seeing Stanford Stadium average 43263.40 people per outing. That’s higher than only Oregon State at 35217.60 and Washington State at 30339.20.

So, digging a bit deeper, Stanford actually ranked sixth in the conference in terms of the amount of stadium capacity filled.

The Cardinal filled 86.53% of Stanford Stadium in those games, again that’s sixth best, but good enough to rank higher than UCLA, Arizona State, USC and Arizona, all who saw a bigger raw number of seats filled.

So, perhaps the biggest achievement out of all of the data is where Stanford aligns with Cal.

Stanford averaged fewer people per game by just under 200 people per outing. However, when you put that against the stadium capacity, the figures are astoundingly in favor of your Cardinal.

Cal filled their stadium to just 69.57% of its capacity. That’s not only the bottom figure in the conference, it’s the 60th-lowest number among 64 Power-5 teams!

5-year attendance average:

Stanford: 43,263.40
Cal: 43,457.00

5-year filled stadium capacity %:

Stanford: 86.53%
Cal: 69.57%

There it is — the Bay Area belongs to Stanford. The data proves it.