UCLA football attendance up 21%

Fans, pat yourselves on the back. The Rose Bowl was packed this fall.

UCLA football saw the second-largest attendance increase among all FBS programs, up an astounding 21 percent from 2011. Only TCU bettered that figure. (Cal led the country with a 48-percent jump, but that’s skewed by the reopening of Memorial Stadium after spending last season off-campus.)

Impressive jump, especially considering that overall FBS attendance dipped to its lowest since 2003. (All stats from the Press-Register, which in turn analyzed official numbers from the NCAA.)

The Pac-12 was the only BCS conference that saw an attendance increase.

Here’s the entire conference:
Cal (3-9, 2-7) – 55,876 – +48%*
UCLA (9-4, 6-3) – 68,481 – +21%
USC (7-5, 5-4) – 87,945 – +18%
WSU (3-9, 1-8) – 30,252 – +5%
OSU (9-3, 6-3) – 43,424 – +2%
Utah (5-7, 3-6) – 45,347 – minor increase
Arizona (7-5, 4-5) – 47,931 – -2%
Oregon (11-1, 8-1) – 57,490 – -3%
ASU (7-5, 5-4) – 56,835 – -4%
Washington (7-5, 5-4) – 58,617 – -6%
Colorado (1-11, 1-8) – 45,373 – -10%
Stanford (11-2, 8-1) – 43,343 – -13%
*Cal moved back to Memorial Stadium after playing last season at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.

While UCLA’s increase can be credited largely to the Jim Mora turnaround, USC wasn’t far behind despite one of its most underachieving seasons in a decade. I suppose there was still the draw of having a postseason. Both schools also obviously benefited from playing in the second-largest city in the country.

Hard to find many other patterns. Oregon State improved about as much as the Bruins, but saw a very modest increase. Oregon is heading to its fourth straight BCS bowl, but saw a very modest decrease. And at the bottom, you have the conference champion right next to its last-place finisher. Looks like Andrew Luck was worth an extra 7,000 seats.