Time for the yearly depressing question of the crowd at the home opener. Do we stop our downward slide?
2016: 48,644 vs. Murray State (2:30 pm)
2017: 42,505 vs. Ball State (11:00 am)
2018: 38,898 vs. Kent State (11:00 am)
Can't really blame our fans for bailing, but it's always sad to see an empty Memorial Stadium. I hope we get a convincing and fun victory in this first game, pick up a win at UConn and take care of EMU to bring out a decent sized crowd out for the Nebraska game. Nebraska should be pretty good, and if we could somehow score an upset there or at least give them a hell of a game, that would do WONDERS for this season ... 4-0 is a bit too crazy to even consider for what we've seen from this regime over the past three years, frankly, but we can't afford another Purdue catastrophe.
Forget which season should have an asterisk due to Deloitte paying for student tickets, but I think it will be closer to 33,000. Also the official box score has the Kent St. attendance at 31,898. So I'm predicting a minor up tick (unless they run another promotion).
https://fightingillini.com/boxscore.aspx?path=football&id=15398