re: What percentage capacity will TS be Saturday?

quote:

---

This isn't just LSU but alot of the people who have tickets now are more of a casual fan. THOUSANDS will show up to campus around 10:30am and see how the game is going before committing to going in..it's the same thing that happened against UF just last year. By the end of the game, it was a special atmosphere but it didnt start out that way.

---

I would venture to guess VERY few people went through the time and hassle to to get to campus for 10:30 before the Florida game just to "wait to see how things were going" before deciding to go into the stadium. If anything, the reason there was a late arriving crowd was because: (1) an 11:00 kick makes it more burdensome for people to arrive on time relative to a night game, especially those coming from outside the metro-BR area, and (2) traffic was more condensed due to several thousand people driving into campus in a relative short window vs. the same amount of people driving into campus over the course of several hours...which is the case for a night game. I was one of those people who missed the first few minutes of the game because I was stuck in traffic. And I wasn't alone.

If fans were "waiting to see how the game was going" they likely would not have entered the stadium. Florida scored first. LSU's first 3 possessions were: punt, fumble, punt. LSU didn't score until early in the 2nd quarter. Not exactly a confidence inspiring start.

I suspect it will be a much different story on Saturday. First, there will be significantly more Tennessee fans at the game than Florida fans. Perhaps 5x as many. Second, LSU was 3-3 coming off an embarrassing blowout loss to Kentucky. Apathy in the program had set in at a level not seen since 1999. That is not the case going into this game. Tennessee is the first top 10 opponent (not named Alabama) coming into Tiger Stadium since 2019. But more than that, LSU is 4-1 with a fanbase believing the program is on the ascent.

You will have some late arriving people for the same reasons implicit in any 11:00 am game. But I'm expecting the crowd to be much more like Georgia in 2018 than Florida last season.