Oklahoma football holds its annual Red-White spring game every season. Even though it offseason and a good five months before fall football season, the event is highly popular and very well attended, and has been for a number of years.
The announced attendance at Saturday’s 2017 spring game at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium was 43, 723, filling up half of the stadium, which has been sold out for 110 consecutive regular-season Sooner football games, or for every single home game since Bob Stoops became head coach 18 seasons ago.
The game is set up as a controlled scrimmage with a modified scoring system. In addition to traditional scoring plays, points are awarded on offense for such integral accomplishments as first downs and offensive plays over 30 yards. The defense earns points for preventing scoring plays and for such things as three-and-outs, and forcing turnovers.
The annual spring game at Oklahoma has traditionally been held at the end of the spring practice schedule, but this season the game was held with five practice days still remaining in the schedule – three this week and two next week.
At one time, the game was set up as a contest between the current varsity and an opponent made up of Sooner football alumni. As you might imagine, this format was especially popular and attracted a great deal of interest from the Sooner fan base.
You would not expect attendance for a college spring football scrimmage to attract anywhere near the same size crowd that would attend a regular season game in the fall, but it’s no surprise to learn that spring football games draw plenty of fan interest.
More from OU Football
- Oklahoma football: Injury report includes pair of Sooner defenders out for season
- Oklahoma football: ESPN, USA Today bowl projections after Week 3
- Oklahoma football: Sooner ‘D’ grading well, but real test begins with Big 12 play
- Two Oklahoma football players receive Big 12 weekly honors
- Oklahoma football: Sooners’ stock rising fast in ESPN prospective rankings
Attendance at OU’s spring game is one of the two biggest in the Big 12 (Texas is the other), but crowds are even larger at some other prime-time programs in other parts of the country.
It is still very early in the spring practice season, and the vast majority of spring games have yet to be played on campuses around the country. That should change over the next couple of weekends, but one other spring showcase that has been played is at Clemson. NBCSports.com reports that the reigning national champions drew 60,000 to Death Valley the same weekend as the Oklahoma spring game.
Georgia, which is scheduled to hold its annual spring game this weekend, reportedly drew 93,000 fans to a spring game a year ago. Ohio State has had close to 100,000 in recent years, and Nebraska, Penn State and Alabama typically draw better than 60,000.
Those numbers make the OU spring attendance figure seem small. Compared with other Big 12 schools, however, interest in Sooner spring football is considerably higher, which speaks volumes about the rich history of success of Oklahoma football and its rabidly loyal fan base.
Attendance numbers for spring games at more than three-quarters of the Big 12 schools runs below 15,000.
All of this just goes to prove that there is no football offseason as far as Oklahoma football fans are concerned.