Nebraska Cornhuskers: B1G baseball attendance is worse than you thought

Back when the Nebraska Cornhuskers first joined the Big Ten, the biggest question among fans of more than just football was, “how badly does this hurt the baseball program.”

There was a time when some Nebraska baseball fans were a bit excited about the move because they believed the Huskers would be able to dominate the B1G. Then a couple of disastrous head coach hires moved the team to the middle (and sometimes bottom) of the pack.

This is, in short, the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ nightmare in this sport. They need the rest of the conference to be excellent. They need it so that they can point to the conference schedule to get at-large bids to regionals. Unfortunately, the Big Ten just doesn’t seem to care about baseball. At all.

Resident Nebraska Cornhuskers Twitter stat man Stewmanji demonstrated just how bad Big Ten support for college baseball is on Friday by showing the average attendance numbers of every B1G team and where that attendance ranks nationally.

It should surprise no one that NU fans lend their support to the Nebraska baseball team. The Huskers’ average attendance this year was 4.531. That ranked them 11th nationally. Not a huge surprise considering the investment in Haymarket Park as their home.

Second in the conference in attendance? It’s a big drop. The Indiana Hoosiers finished second in the Big Ten by averaging 1,656 paying fans per contest. That’s only 45th nationally. Michigan’s 1,437 and Purdue’s 1,259 are the only other schools that average more than 1,000 fans per game.

Maryland, The regular season conference champs and a program that is turning into a powerhouse, has an average attendance of just 967. That’s 73rd in the country.

And then there’s Northwestern. Obviously, the program is very, very bad so it’s not a shock that attendance is poor. But less than 300 people go to the park each day that the Wildcats play at home.

To really put this into perspective and to understand how bad the support really is, let’s take a look at the average numbers in a conference known for college baseball, the SEC.

In the SEC, three different teams averaged 10,000 fans each game and a fourth was just a hair shy. Seven teams, Arkansas, Mississippi State, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas A&M averaged more fans per game than the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

It’s a striking comparison that helps tell the tale as to why the Big Ten doesn’t get more respect as a conference. And why the Huskers are seemingly in limbo when it comes to baseball.