Published October 25, 2006
It's a staple of any football Saturday at Michigan Stadium. In the second half, the announcer informs the crowd that it is once again the largest crowd watching a football game anywhere in America.
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And the attendance is usually above 110,000.
Therein lie the questions: Doesn't the Big House officially only seat 107,501? Why is our normal attendance between 109, 000 and 112,000? And what's with that one extra seat?
The extra seat was included in the renovation plans by head football coach Fritz Crisler back in 1949. Crisler wanted the extra seat to be reserved for then-Athletic Director Fielding Yost. The legend goes that Crisler was the only one who actually knew where the extra seat was.
The new plans raised the capacity of the stadium from 97,000 to 100,001 to accommodate the post-World War II boom in attendance and included the installation of 13 rows of steel bleachers to replace temporary wooden bleachers.
Further renovations to seating in the Big House were made in 1973. Capacity went up by 1,000 seats. and then another 800 in 1991, for a total of 102, 501 seats. The Big House was the largest stadium in the country until 1996 when the University of Tennessee expanded Neyland Stadium.
But the University refused to allow the Big House be the Next-Biggest House. In 1998, 5,000 additional seats were added for a grand total of 107,501 seats, restoring the stadium to its throne as the largest in the country.
However, the reported attendance for each game exceeds the seating capacity. Isn't that a fire hazard of some kind? There's an explanation for that as well.
The turnstiles at the entrances of the stadium measure game attendance, so everyone who goes through them is counted in the official attendance for a game.
So all the concession stand workers, band members, football players, coaches, reporters and groundskeepers are counted, even though they aren't actually in the stands.
That's why the largest crowd in stadium and NCAA history was 112,118 for the Nov. 22, 2003 game against Ohio State University.
EKJYOT SAINI
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