Toughest Place to Play in Your Conference

[frank uible]

Williams' website claims that the attendance of 13,671 for its 1989 home game against Amherst is a New England DIII record.

[BVHawk]

BV is a tough place to play late in the season.  Mainly from the snow blowing off the lake!

[AUPepBand]

I think the most ever at Alfred's Merrill Field was in the early 1970s when both Alfred and Hobart were undefeated and a sportswriter billed the meeting as "Super Bowl East". Attendance was said to be close to 8,000.

[K-Mack]

I have never seen attendance in the D-III football records, no.

Would seem to me that the most interesting of all Attendance records is the single-game stat, but I get the feeling the attendance data is compiled for other reasons and added to the record book sort of as a "why keep it to ourselves?" favor.

I'm going to add that to my list of things to do, along with create and interactive D3 map, take pics of all 234 stadiums and and host the D3football.com Kickoff Classic.

Occidental at Trinity (Texas), 10 a.m.
Wesley at Rowan, 1 p.m.
UW-Whitewater at Hardin-Simmons, 4 p.m.
St. John's vs. Mount Union, 7 p.m.

[Hawks88]

I'm going to add that to my list of things to do, along with create and interactive D3 map, take pics of all 234 stadiums and and host the D3football.com Kickoff Classic.

Occidental at Trinity (Texas), 10 a.m.
Wesley at Rowan, 1 p.m.
UW-Whitewater at Hardin-Simmons, 4 p.m.
St. John's vs. Mount Union, 7 p.m.

May have to rethink the order in which those are scheduled. Unless you think Occidental would enjoy playing at 8 a.m. their time. 

[tecmobowler]

Ithaca/Cortland has been close to 12,000 i do believe.

[K-Mack]

I'm going to add that to my list of things to do, along with create and interactive D3 map, take pics of all 234 stadiums and and host the D3football.com Kickoff Classic.

Occidental at Trinity (Texas), 10 a.m.
Wesley at Rowan, 1 p.m.
UW-Whitewater at Hardin-Simmons, 4 p.m.
St. John's vs. Mount Union, 7 p.m.

May have to rethink the order in which those are scheduled. Unless you think Occidental would enjoy playing at 8 a.m. their time. 

I thought about it, but since it was a season-opener and an imaginary idea in my head, I didn't feel the need to correct it. I might have had in it L.A. to begin with, but moved it to buy two hours.

One of those things where if I had spent more than 45 seconds on it, perhaps I would have come up with the better arrangement myself. In any case, thanks Hawks.

[K-Mack]

This was from another board, but probably belongs here, since this has become the stadium geek thread.

K-Mack, I realize these boards are here for "arguing" and airing things out, but I said all I was going to say on the subject.  I didn't feel the need to beat a dead horse.  Apparently I was wrong in my figuring and I took my lumps and now we've moved on.  By the way, I believe it was you on another board that was asking if any D3 stadium has home-stands that stretch from the 10 yd. line to 10 yd. line.  It could be mistaken identity, but I'm pretty sure it was you.  If there is ever a big enough game at Gesling Stadium, check it out.  Home-stands stretch from goal-line to goal-line, (Probably to account for not having a visitor's side.)

Yeah,
I wrote that, in ATN I think. I've seen the aerials of CMU's field (did a CMU-JHU road game a few years back) and thought it looked like a great place to see a game.

I don't have QuickTime on my work PC, but I think this is a photo/video of the stadium.

http://www.cmu.edu/vrtour/nodes/gesling.html

I guess I'm a D3 stadium geek or whatever.

[K-Mack]

Since this has become the unofficial 'Game Day Atmosphere' thread, just thought I would mention ...

Hardin-Simmons' end zone couches beat Linfield's.

[TC]

That's pretty funny.

So we were once discussing biggest crowd ever at a D3 game, since someone erroneously reported 9,570 at UW-W to be a D3 record, not a stadium record.

I have since read one account of Monon Bell going over 11,000.

Pat pointed out a 13,000+ Johnnie/Tommie crowd.

But it brings me great pride to announce that in my unofficial and incomplete research, the 14,000 at the 100th R-MC/H-SC game in 1994 (I was in uniform at that game, though hopelessly buried on the depth chart) is now the highest listed attendance I have seen accounted for in print by a reputable source.

I don't know if I've seen the Game Book from that day, or if the NCAA has compiled highest single-game attendances for D3 and just cleverly hid them somewhere in the record book, but so far ... this is what I've got.

Not sure, off the top of my head, what Tommie/Johnnie game Pat was referencing, but the largest Johnnie crowd I can remember was 13,107 against Bethel in the bitter cold in 2003.  Both teams came in undefeated (St. John's at 8-0, Bethel at 9-0) and the winner would claim the MIAC championship.  Oh yeah, there was a little something about John Gagliardi sitting at 408 career wins.  The Johnnies scored a late TD to win 29-26 on their way to the National Championship.  According to the postgame notes, it was the largest  crowd ever to witness an SJU game.

Last weekend's Homecoming thriller against St. Olaf fell just short of breaking the SJU attendence record (12,339 was the reported crowd).  I would imagine the best-attended St. John's/St. Thomas game was actually at St. Thomas in 2003 when Gagliardi tied the record (and I would be wrong--it was actually 2001 when 10,741 fans were at the game in Collegeville).  I blame ineptitude on the part of St. Thomas fans for a lot of things, including their inability to help St. John's set attendence records.

[SU Backer]

  I'd like to say it's Salisbury in the ACFC......but it's not (unless you count the 1/2 mile walk through the tunnel under route 13, but I don't think that counts  ). Wesley is the toughest place to play in our small conference. Very enthusiastic crowd that really gets on the visiting team in the small staging area before the team gets on the field. It also always seems kinda windy there too for some reason. As far as other places Brockport has a huge facility that's real nice, but a crowd of 2k and it still looks empty. Newport News Apprentice has a top notch facility, both stands and field are very nice, but they don't draw well. Frostburg is nice too. Salisbury really needs a facility upgrade. The stands are OK and the field is new and the lights are up for next year, but the press box is poor at best. And the walking up, under and along public streets for the teams is not good. They need a new press box and some decent locker rooms for both the home and away sides. I'm sure there are many places that have bizarre stuff (like the Salisbury walk) that is unique to their place....

[TC]

Taking this discussion even further off course...

Can anyone confirm or disconfirm that the Johnnies' per-game attendance mark of 8,547 in 2006 is a Division III record?  St. John's has led DIII in attendance each of the last 6 years and that is their highest total of that period. 

In running the numbers for my most recent column at www.johnniefootball.com, the Johnnies are at 9,373 fans per game this year through 4 home dates.  Their remaining home games are against top rival St. Thomas and whatever home playoff games they might get (which, most likely, would bring down their attendance average). 

The have been very fortunate with the weather so far this year--each Saturday has been even better than the last, while their 2 road games have been in the rain--and they play 3 of their big 4 opponents (Concordia, St. Olaf and St. Thomas, not Bethel) at home.

[ADL70]

It is not the d3 record.  But it is the highest since the DI schools with D3 football left.  And SJU has led d3 every year starting in 2001.

[Pat Coleman]

Not sure, off the top of my head, what Tommie/Johnnie game Pat was referencing, but the largest Johnnie crowd I can remember was 13,107 against Bethel in the bitter cold in 2003. 

I didn't -- he misremembered. The 409 game was the one I was referring to.

[SJU09]

The Johnnie -  Tommie game in 1997 was technically a home game for St. John's but was played in the Metrodome.  The attendance was  12,145.