Do BYU football fans travel well?

So I know some of my MWC fan friends like to comment on how BYU thinks their fans travel well but they really don't. So I thought I'd try and compile some numbers to see if hosting a home game against BYU really matters to attendance. What I found is interesting.



In each year that BYU has been independent, their road games have resulted in higher than average season attendance for the host in all but 1 game per year. Here is the games that were below ticket average:



2011 - Ole Miss - 97.59% (-1,364 tickets) of season average - This was the first meeting between the two schools and opened the season. Other non-conference home games included FCS Southern Illinois (103.56% of season average) and Louisiana Tech (78.11% of season average).



2012 - New Mexico State - 86.23% (-2,008 tickets) of season average - This game was an anomoly. It was the 11th game (Nov 24) for a team that was 1-9 rolling into that week with 9 losses in a row. Besides, if you take the New Mexico rivalry home game out (since it significantly skews the numbers) they averaged only 9,630 per game (the BYU game attendance was 12,571).



2013 - Nevada - 86.37% (-3,399 tickets) of season average - This game was game 12 for the Wolf Pack and they came in at 4-7. The only home game that drew fewer fans for Nevada was the previous week against San Jose State with around 800 fewer in attendance.



2014 - Texas - 99.32% (-640 tickets) of season average - BYU went in week 2 of the season after a 19 point win at home the previous season. And with an attendance only slightly below season average at 93,463 its not like people stayed away from the game which saw BYU beat the home team 41-7.



The other 18 true road games (not including 2011 TCU @ Cowboys Stadium) sold over the season average. Relative attendance of note includes 2012 San Jose State's game (143.61% of season average), 2013 Houston's game (136.52% of season average) and 2014 UConn's game (128% of season average).



In my book that means BYU travels pretty well overall since 82% of their road games result in higher than average season attendance--and occasionally the numbers are significantly higher than the average attendance.

You are making a theoretical leap / assumption in the absence of actual attendance. Its a good effort but not exactly compelling proof. My guess is the stats are somewhere.

The anomaly is that BYU fans actually travel to games fairly well but the numbers are significantly boosted by obviously the local LDS population. So maybe that is what naysayers are trying to point out. Regardless, actual seats sold to BYU fans is a substantive number, maybe not as big as some major universities but has to be pretty dang close.

Thanks for the numbers, nevertheless.

I don't think that "travel well" means that they have to originate from Provo and actually travel with the team. Red Sox fans "travel well" but most of the Red Sox fans you see at California stadiums are California residents. Same with Green Bay Packers fans (although they’re not from Boston, but Wisconsin, but, again, likely a Wisconsin transplant.) Recently I’ve been to more BYU away games than home games, and the presence of BYU fans is always significant.



Heck, look at WCC basketball. Our fans often outnumber the fans of the home teams. The ability of BYU fans to “travel well” cannot seriously be debated. The actual benefits of BYU’s fans traveling well can be (i.e. hotel sales etc) but the fact that the number of BYU fans’ fannies in the seats of the opposing teams being significant is a given.

I think the increased crowd size at BYU road games is more dramatically seen in basketball due to the smaller WCC venues and decided to test it for football.



All these notes are based on actual attendance numbers. Of course I'm not going to differentiate on which fans in the stands are from BYU and which are for the home team--or where those BYU fans in attendance actually reside. I don't have any of that information available to me and I doubt that level of statistics have been compiled (I've never been asked that when I buy tickets though if tickets are ordered through electronic means maybe they can compile some of that).



Essentially the exercise was to list all opponents in that given year, take the reported attendance numbers from the game vs BYU, and compare that to the average attendance for that team for that particular season. I used that measure to avoid things like stadium capacity variances or trends in overall college football attendance from year to year. Wikipedia lists each college football team by year, their opponents, and the reported attendance so anyone is welcome to pull the numbers and see if I'm fudging anything.



I stand by the observation that in 5 of the 6 true away games in each season where teams hosted BYU in 2012 through 2014, attendance was above the season average. 2011 had a neutral site game (the Cowboys Stadium game vs TCU was left out due to not having a frame of reference for "average attendance" since its a 1 time event at a different venue) and 4 true away games. Attendance was above average for 3 of those 4 true away games. My only admitted leap is taking that to mean hosting BYU as a home game puts butts in the seats compared to the average college football opponent. I'll stand by that one as well unless someone can refute it with numbers since I don't think its an invalid conclusion. Perhaps my title isn't the best, I'll give you that.

Well I think our attendance is a P5 indicator not a G5.