South Florida plays all its college football games at Raymond James Stadium. (For those lacking stadium name knowledge: the one with the giant pirate ship and loud, obnoxious cannons.) Typically, there are not as many people at a USF game as there are at Tampa Bay Buccaneers games; this makes total sense because USF is not Alabama or LSU. Or Florida State, for that matter.But for Thursday night's game against Cincinnati, USF had 52,073 fans show up to Raymond James. That prompted some folks around the area to wonder if the Bulls would finally outdraw the Bucs (and, thusly, embarrass the hell out of Tampa's currently anemic NFL franchise). Well, they did. By 12,000 people.
Turns out it wasn't even close. According to the Tampa Sports Authority, the actual attendance for the Bucs' 28-21 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday was 42,847, meaning that USF drew 12,226 more fans to Raymond James Stadium on Thursday night.Even worse? The Bucs announced an "attendance" of 62,422 for Sunday's game, which, apparently means that 20,000 people didn't think it was worth rolling out to see them try to pick up a win against the almost equally hapless Carolina Panthers.
What does this all mean in the long term? Not much: USF was a top 25 team in the nation. A win over Cincinnati and dark-horse Heisman candidate Tony Pike would have put them in the driver's seat for a BCS game. The Bucs are in full-on rebuilding mode and not even a top-25 NFL team. So, yeah, this probably won't last forever.
