College Towns, Enrollments, & Football Stadiums

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Found an analysis by someone on Reddit named e8odie and although their data was originally from 2012, I updated it to 2023. How many of these did you know?

Football Stadium < Enrollment – what Power 4 Universities have a football stadium that can’t hold their student body in them? All three are in the Big XII.

  1. U. of Central Florida’s football stadium (45K) holds ~25,000 less people than their student body (69K)
  2. U. of Cincinnati’s football stadium (38K) holds ~13,000 less people than their student body (51K)
  3. U. of Houston’s football stadium (40K) holds ~5,000 less people than their student body (45K)

Football Stadium > Town – what Power 4 Universities have a football stadium bigger than the town where they are located?

  1. Penn State U. ~66,000 more seats (107K) than the town of University Park (41K)
  2. Clemson U. ~64,000 more seats (82K) than the town of Clemson (18K)
  3. U. of Mississippi ~38,000 more seats (64K) than the town of Oxford (26K)
  4. Mississippi State U. ~37,000 more seats (61K) than the town of Starkville (24K)
  5. West Virginia U. ~30,000 more seats (60K) than the town of Morgantown (30K)
  6. Michigan State U. ~28,000 more seats (75K) than the town of East Lansing (47K)
  7. Virginia Tech U. ~20,000 more seats (66K) than the town of Blacksburg (46K)
  8. U. of Maryland ~18,000 more seats (52K) than the town of College Park (34K)
  9. Purdue U. ~16,000 more seats (61K) than the town of West Lafayette (45K)
  10. U. of Virginia ~15,000 more seats (61K) than the town of Charlottesville (46K)
  11. Oklahoma State U. ~5,000 more seats (54K) than the town of Stillwater (49K)
  12. Auburn U. ~5,000 more seats (88K) than the town of Auburn (83K)

Enrollment > Town – what Power 4 Universities have a student enrollment that is larger than the town where the college is located? Three of these are located in the Big 10 Conference.

  1. Penn State U. (49K) is ~19,000 students larger than University Park (30K)
  2. U. of Maryland (41K) is ~7,000 students larger than College Park (34K)
  3. Clemson U. (23K) is ~5,000 students larger than Clemson (18K)
  4. Michigan State (50K) is ~3,000 students larger than East Lansing (47K)


Awesome data visualization of similar comparison from 2017 that includes all FBS Colleges. Would love to know how to do this!

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