Indiana Football: How no fans at football games would affect Hoosiers
By Adam Childs
Indiana football: games that having no fans make little to no difference
Listen IU fans can be great and they are awesome for basketball games, but they are still waiting to jump on the bandwagon for the football team. They had a great year last year, but when they played Michigan at home late in the season there were still plenty of seats available. Home games with no fans, won’t be that much of a difference. It may hurt to hear that, but it is somewhat true.
Because of this the home games without fans won’t seem to matter much. The home-field advantage the Hoosiers got wasn’t from the fans being particularly loud. Maybe that would have changed this year if fans were allowed in, but I will believe it when I see it.
When the Hoosiers play at home against the Wolverines or Buckeyes they are sometimes outnumbered by the opposing fans and can definitely be drowned out also.
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There is one home game that having no fans will make a difference but we will talk about that later. But for the most part the home games will be just fine either way. It will stink to not have fans for the games at home against Michigan State and Penn State, but I think the effect will be minimal.
That means games against Western Kentucky, Ball State, Maryland, and Illinois at home won’t be that big of a deal without fans.
Road games at UConn and Rutgers probably won’t matter much either in terms of fans. Both of those schools are not good. Rutgers could have had more fans this year because of the excitement of having Greg Schiano back, but again they aren’t great this year so it probably won’t matter. UConn is bad and has been bad, so that is a non-factor also.
While that eight of the 12 games that seem to be little to no difference if there are fans are not, there are still four games on the Hoosiers schedule that will be a huge deal if no fans are there. And it could really benefit Indiana.