STATS FCS FOOTBALL STORY LINK
Prairie View A&M University football led the Southwestern Athletic Conference and ranked eighth in attendance nationally in the Football College Subdivision (FCS), according to numbers released Thursday by the NCAA.
In 2017, the Panthers averaged 17,803 for five home dates, including the State Fair Classic in which Prairie View A&M was the home team last season. The NCAA counts neutral site attendance in matchups of FCS vs. FCS teams.
Among HBCUs, only Florida A&M (19,048 avg., four games) had a higher attendance.
Montana led the FCS in attendance (23,535 avg., six), followed by James Madison (21,724, nine), Florida A&M, and Yale (18,940, five).
Rounding out the Top 10 was Montana State (18,617, six), Jacksonville State (18,388, sixth), national champion North Dakota State (18,333, nine), the Panthers (17,803, five), Delaware (16,648, six) and North Carolina A&T (15,697, five).
The average attendance at FCS games dropped by less than 2 percent this past season, although the number of overall fans rose slightly to over 5.5 million because there were more games than in 2016.
The NCAA's release of its annual attendance report on Thursday reflected the average FCS crowd size was 8,223, down 134 per game from 8,357 in the 2016 season. The 670 games, based on home and neutral-site attendance plus the FCS championship game, drew 5,509,277 fans (neutral-site games between FBS and FCS teams are included for FBS attendance figures, not the FCS). A year earlier, 5,473,956 fans attended 655 FCS games.
The 23-game playoffs, included in the statistics, drew 222,424 fans, an increase of over 10 percent from 2016.
