Originally posted by InsHAWK:
7948 at Maryland game.
The Marylanf game was NOT played on Sunday morning, conflicting with church services. It was played in the early evening at a time when people were off work and early enough for kids to attend with school the next day. Their game, unlike Iowa's, was not carried on local TV, they had no assurance that ESPN would not telecast mostly the Ohio State-North Carolina (ACC) instead. Iowa was playing Miami of Florida, a school & fan base close to 2000 miles away (maybe 50 fans attending the game).
Maryland was playing undefeated Princeton, with President Obama (alumnae wife) likely to attend, about 5000 alumni in the Washington area. fan base mostly within a 4 hour drive.
You would be wise to check the comparative attendance over the 35 years since Title IX and the beginning of NCAA women's basketball. Within a few years, Iowa was among the 15 leaders nationally in attendance, and have remained there most of the seasons since, occasionally dropping to around 20th, but never out of the top 25.While living in Bethesda, MD, about a half hour drive from Cole Field House in College Park, I was a season ticket holder for Terrapin & women's hoops: during those years, Driscoll & then Williams had the Maryland men usually in the midst of ACC madness & as a non-Terrapin fan I had no intention of making the large annual contribution necessary to obtain a season ticket. Football tickets you could buy for $5 at Safeway super markets. I was at the game when the Iowa women beat Maryland on their home court some twenty pus years ago, when they were a prennial contender along with Virginia to win the ACC most seasons. There were barely a hundred fans at the game, more of them Iowan fans than Maryland. Terrapin fans have always been frontrunners: sixty years ago they had top football teams, played to full stadia. Then it was men's basketball for thirty years. Now its the women's teams in the national rankings for a decade now.
The population of the Washington metro area is ten times that of Iowa City-Cedar Rapids.But it is a safe bet that most seasons the Hawkeye women's attendance will exceed that of the Terrapins.