Awkward! Penn Football Games to Show No Change in Attendance Despite Canceled Season

The Ivy League has recently announced that it will cancel all sports for the fall semester. Under the Button has run the numbers and concluded that this move will have absolutely no effect on the attendance rates at football games, which statistically, has been 0. Our projection shows that even when you factor in every game being canceled due to the global pandemic, there will be exactly the same amount of students not showing up as there were in previous years.

Students expressed their feelings about the season being canceled, Sydney Michaels (C ‘21) says “Yeah, this year, I’ll say I couldn’t go to any football games because of a pandemic, whereas last year I couldn’t go because I, like the rest of this school, fundamentally lack school spirit and show no interest in supporting our sports teams!” 

Nassim Khalil (W '23), a student who has not attended a single sporting event, lamented the decision saying, "This sucks! I — like everyone else at this university — only came to this school because I really wanted to watch Penn sports. Sports is the whole Penn experience and now it's ruined!" 

Other students protested UTB's calculations arguing that they attended the first game of the year or the Homecoming game in years past. However, attendance at these games could not be counted because headcount calculations for a student to have “attended” a game require that they have to stay the entire duration of the game, not just take photos with friends, throw toast, and leave halfway.  

Elijah Davis (E '22), one of the members of Penn's football team, says "The team is definitely bummed, but we're looking gonna keep working hard so we're ready for the 2021 season. I can't wait until the day I'm back on Franklin Field, looking out at all those seats, imagining what it would be like if people actually filled them."