When UMass football opened the 2018 season against Duquesne, the announced crowd at 17,000-seat McGuirk Stadium was 8,684 fans — essentially a half-full stadium. For the next home game against Charlotte a month later, the announced crowd was 10,086.

Over six home games in 2018, including a matchup with BYU at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium, UMass averaged 10,385 fans, based on the announced attendance. Amid a 4-8 season in which head coach Mark Whipple was fired at the end, there was not much reason to expect big crowds.

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But when UMass submitted its annual NCAA attendance audit, it reported an average paid attendance of 15,075 per game.

Why the change? The NCAA requires an average attendance of 15,000 fans per game once every two years to maintain FBS status. But the reality is a number of programs don’t reach that mark, especially in an era in which attendance is falling across the board while the number of FBS schools has grown. Attendance has fallen in the FBS as a whole seven times in the past eight years, and it is currently at the lowest average mark since 1996, according to CBS Sports.

As a result, schools that have trouble reaching the 15,000 mark have to boost their numbers through artificial means. In UMass’ case, an average of 8,657 tickets per game at McGuirk Stadium were credited to “Sam’s Squad,” part of the school’s efforts to get discount tickets into the hands of local charities and other groups.

Some schools try to hide attendance issues publicly by announcing total paid attendance. It happens in all sports. The Twitter account @EmptySeatsPics often highlights the disparity between an announced crowd and an empty stadium. UMass is more transparent than most. Athletic director Ryan Bamford wants to be honest when announcing attendance to Minutemen fans.

“We might have 15,000 tickets out, but if 10,000 show up, I don’t want to be laughed at and say, yeah, we had 15,000, and our fans say there’s no way,” Bamford said. “We try to gauge it based on who is really in the building, so what you see on the box score isn’t what’s been sold.”

But it’s a reality that schools like UMass have to do some numbers magic. Since 2014, UMass’ “paid” attendance has bounced up and down to meet the NCAA requirement, according to audits obtained by The Athletic through a public records request.

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In 2018, 14 schools announced average crowds below 15,000, and more almost certainly didn’t hit the actual mark. The Athletic submitted records requests for attendance audits at those 14 schools. Not every school responded by the time of publication, and details included in responses differed. Some schools noted only the season average attendance, while others provided game-by-game breakdowns showing where each ticket came from.

How schools get over the mark varies. Some work with groups that distribute them to local charities. Some have agreements through sponsorship deals. But the tickets have to be paid for. They can’t be given away for free.

In these cases, schools are essentially buying tickets from themselves, either directly or through deals. Even a school like Northern Illinois, which has won four MAC championships in the past eight years, has to boost its numbers.

The idea of the rule was to require investment in football for FBS programs. But that’s already happening, even with losing programs. UMass is undergoing facility renovations, for example. It’s leading to a question asked more and more by administrators: Why does the rule still exist?

“I don’t know if it’s doing what it was intended to do,” Bamford said.

“I think it should go away,” NIU athletic director Sean Frazier said.

“I don’t know if it fits in today’s world,” Kent State athletic director Joel Nielsen said.

The NCAA football oversight committee has discussed the rule several times in recent years, including last month. It opted not to make a change, but it also knows that time might be coming. The problem isn’t going away.

The requirement began in 1978 when Division I split into what are now known as FBS and FCS. To keep together the schools that invest heavily in football, an FBS requirement was set with an average of 17,000 fans once every four years and a 30,000-seat stadium, among other requirements regarding scheduling, scholarships and other issues.

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In 2002, the football oversight committee changed the requirements to what they are now: a 15,000-fan average, with no stadium size requirement.

But in the past decade, attendance has fallen. Whether it’s because of the quality of broadcasts at home, travel costs, traffic congestion, weather or kickoff dates/times, it’s an issue every sport is facing.

“I believe there’s still huge interest in these games and these sports, but the days of expanding stadiums to seat 100,000 are long gone,” Charlotte athletic director Mike Hill said. “Basketball stadiums you see reducing, football stadiums you see reducing capacity. That’s gonna happen.”

NCAA bylaw 20.9.9.5.1 states, “An institution that fails to satisfy any of the Football Bowl Subdivision membership requirements shall receive notice of such noncompliance. After receiving notice, any further noncompliance with the Football Bowl Subdivision requirements within a 10-year period shall cause the institution to be placed in restricted membership.” Restricted membership includes a postseason ban and could lead to reclassification to FCS.

Kent State received a notice of noncompliance after recording attendance of 8,999 in 2007 and 10,639 in 2008. Nielsen was hired as Kent State’s AD in 2010, and the noncompliance notice quickly came across his desk. He says it was primarily because of a failure to file the report with the adjusted numbers. He had to get the house in order, submit the forms and go through the typical hoops to hit the requirement.

“It was pretty strongly suggested by my president that it not happen again,” Nielsen said. “Fortunately, it hasn’t happened again.”

Kent State began an internal campaign called “90K,” because Kent State would need to hit 90,000 total fans to meet the requirement. It began the up-and-down trend. According to KentWired, Kent State’s paid attendance was more than 15,000 in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and it was below 7,100 in 2009, 2011 and 2013. The school did not respond to The Athletic’s request for more recent data.

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Kent State gets to 15,000 through its marketing deal with IMG. In years when it needs to hit the mark, Kent State uses IMG money to buy discounted tickets from itself. Per NCAA rules, discount tickets are required to be at least one-third of the price of the most expensive available tickets.

Ball State has similar up-and-down numbers. In 2015, it sold 40,000 “discounted general admission” tickets in the final two home games to reach the 15,000 average, according to its audits. In 2017, it had more than 23,000 tickets credited to “foundation” in the final two games to reach the average, along with 5,500 credited to “community relations” for each game. In 2019, Ball State hosts Indiana at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and hopes that will increase its actual attendance.“We certainly reach out and work with businesses to make sure our local YMCAs and youth groups have access to our events as much as we can,” Ball State athletic director Beth Goetz said. “That’s always a piece of the puzzle for multiple reasons.”

Eastern Michigan receives $280,000 annually from a sponsorship with Pepsi, and according to the school’s most recent audit conducted in February, “EMU has the option to direct Pepsi to expend some of these fees to purchase home football game tickets. These tickets may be distributed to community groups identified by Pepsi and EMU. Tickets issued are used to supplement the actual attendance total.”

That included Pepsi “buying” at least 10,000 tickets in four of five home games in 2017. In 2016, there were at least 10,000 “groups” tickets in every game.“We have to get creative with that,” EMU athletic director Scott Wetherbee said. “My goal is to continue to lessen that, obviously. We’ve got plans in place to chip away. One of my arguments to the 15,000 piece is that when that was enacted, we weren’t playing Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday in November in snowstorms. The MAC, we love the visibility of television and being center stage on Tuesday night, but there’s also a challenge on the back end to get people to leave work early to come to a game. There’s a part of me that would like to see a change to the policy.”

If there are so many schools against a rule many feel is arbitrary, why hasn’t it changed? It’s not because of the FBS schools on the Division I football oversight committee. It’s the FCS representatives.

“Their concern is if you take the attendance requirement out, do others feel it’s easier to become an FBS member?” committee chair and West Virginia athletic director Shane Lyons said. “And then you have an influx of people going to FBS to test the waters. They think there should be some type of requirement there.”

Another member of the oversight committee noted to The Athletic that the current FBS requirement for a conference invitation should be enough to prevent a bunch of FCS schools from moving up. Liberty received a waiver in 2017 to move up to FBS, but that was because of the financial investment it made in football. Its attempts to join a conference have been rebuffed. Most FCS schools do not want to jump up into FBS independence. There is no FCS attendance requirement, but 12 schools reported an average of more than 15,000 in 2018.

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Todd Turner, the former UConn and N.C. State athletic director, is the president of Collegiate Sports Associates, an executive search and consulting firm that has been hired to assess athletic departments like Kent State. He considers the attendance requirement outdated and says it doesn’t influence the decision-making of FCS teams. It only affects current FBS teams.

“I don’t think the rule has had any impact on people’s desirability to stay FBS,” Turner said. “They’ll find ways to do it. Oftentimes, it’s through things like having your media rights partner buy the tickets from you and they reduce their fee by the amount of money. That’s crazy. There’s no reason to do that, in my opinion. It’s just fiddling around with the books. It’s arbitrary. It has limited value.”

But the rule isn’t changing, meaning schools must continue to do numbers gymnastics.

“The world changes. We know that. What worked 15 years ago may not work today,” Lyons said. “Is there other criteria other than attendance that can be put in? We didn’t think outside the box at (last month’s) meeting, but that doesn’t mean in the future we can’t have those discussions.”

Many schools are making necessary investments. Even among the lowest-attended programs, UMass is renovating facilities, and Eastern Michigan is building an end zone facility despite the school recently cutting multiple sports.

Should these programs drop to FCS? Idaho already did. Some believe it could be in UConn’s future. EMU has fought pushes for the school to drop the sport. But that’s separate from an attendance requirement that isn’t costing anymore money. It’s simply sending the money in a circle.

Nothing increases actual attendance more than winning, Turner says. EMU has reached two bowl games in the past three years after going nearly 30 years without a bowl.

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“We had a really long stretch in the ’90s and 2000s where we weren’t competitive. It was very challenging,” Wetherbee said. “People attend games because of tradition, and that’s usually based on some kind of success. We’re just now building the tradition. … We talk about it every day. We’ve doubled our season ticket number in the last two years. That’s guaranteed revenue and building off that.”

A new video board and speakers and an Eagle Walk to increase fan engagement are some changes EMU has made to increase actual attendance. Many other schools use themes to target groups. Each UMass home game in 2018 was a themed day: Youth Day, Class of 2022, Hall of Fame, Family Weekend/Hometown Heroes, Homecoming and Band Day/Military Appreciation Day.

Charlotte ran a campaign this spring targeting young alumni to take an “official visit” to campus like a recruit. It included a coach-guided tour of facilities. The hope was to get alumni to “commit” to buying tickets and tailgating. For all schools, students and young alumni are the vital future season ticket base.“We started football seven years ago. While we’re ready to turn the page on being a new program, we haven’t had years of success to translate into a generational fan base,” Hill said. “We have to jumpstart that. That’s what young alumni signing day is all about.”

For many fans, the at-home experience for watching a game has surpassed the value of attending in person. All sports teams are trying to create unique and valuable experiences fans can’t get at home.

In 2018, the Mountain West and Conference USA had their lowest average attendance in conference history, according to CBS. But even the Big Ten was at its lowest since 1993 and the SEC was at its lowest since 2003. (The AAC, ACC and MAC had the only increases in 2018, all up less than 1 percent).

“The numbers are pretty clear. It’s declined, consistently, over time,” Turner said. “TV has had a lot to do with that, the internet. Fan interest in college football is still enormous, but what’s the prognosis moving forward? You’ve got to be concerned and watchful.”

For Group of 5 programs that don’t have successful histories or large fan bases, the challenge is even tougher. For schools fighting with the 15,000 requirement, the only thing that can solve the problem on a large scale is a lot of winning. But even that isn’t enough for some programs.

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Those places will continue to tweak things to make games more appealing, but they’ll also continue to work the numbers gymnastics to meet a rule they believe is out of date and perhaps directing attention of athletic departments to the wrong places.

“Having requirements for the sake of having requirements, the minimums become maximums,” Frazier said. “ As soon as you have minimums, people say that’s all they’re going to do. When you have those things, it becomes a blind check off. See how we can get around it, versus doing it for the right reasons.”

(Top photo: Steven King / Getty Images)