by Mo Johnson
(VA)
The NCAA made it official. 2010 was another great attendance year for the NCAA.
Nearly 50 million fans attended games.
For the 13th consecutive season, the SEC was the dominate conference, with 6.5 million fans attending sec football games. That's an increase of 432 per game over 2009. The Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and ACC round out the top five.
Interestingly, the Pac-10 actually saw a decline in the average attendance of 367 fans from 2009.
Conference USA was #1 in 2010 conference attendance increase with an increase of 1,854 fans.
The Sun Belt was second, behind the C-USA, growing by 1,506 fans a game last year.
Here's the rankings:
DIVISION I CONFERENCE ATTENDANCE
Rank Division I Total Teams Games 2010 Attendance Average Change in Attendance
1 Southeastern 12 85 6,521,151 76,719 432
2 Big Ten 11 76 5,480,023 72,106 336
3 Big 12 12 83 5,226,903 *62,975 100
4 Pacific-10 10 62 3,336,793 53,819 -367
5 Atlantic Coast 12 79 4,067,984 51,493 244
6 Big East 8 53 2,386,461 45,028 224
7 Mountain West 9 54 1,861,071 34,464 1,263
8 Conference USA 12 76 2,162,509 28,454 1,854
9 Western Athletic 9 58 1,356,797 23,393 644
10 Sun Belt 9 48 *862,502 17969 1,506
11 Mid-American 13 74 1,155,099 15,609 293
12 Independents 3 17 887,165 52,186 3,559