College Football 2011: Do Nick Saban and 'Bama Own Spring? Numbers Don't Lie

Alabama can not only claim to have taken the national championship away from Texas two seasons ago, but they may have also stolen their slogan because when it comes to spring games, things certainly aren't bigger in Texas.

Alabama has owned that title since Nick Saban's arrival in Alabama.

The spring game figures are accurate at some stadiums and wildly over exaggerated at others. Take Ole Miss for example, one Ole Miss beat writer tweeted during the Rebels' spring game, "Just polled reporters for their crowd estimates. Got everything from 7,500 to 18,000."

But Mississippi reported the figure to be 28,000.

One year, Ohio State claimed to break Alabama's attendance record, but one Big Ten reporter commented that if there were over 93,000 there, there must have been 10,000 in the bathrooms at all times.

With Ohio state playing one of the final practice games of the spring, it will be interesting to see if the troubles of Coach Jim Tressel translates into smaller crowds. As always at Ohio State, it will be interesting to see what number they report and what the actual numbers is.

The media credits Nick Saban for making the spring games such a big media event now.

A spring game had never had more than maybe 30,000 show up until Saban arrived on campus at Tuscaloosa. That year, over 100,000 people showed up and only 93,000+ were allowed to enter the stadium due to the Fire Marshall ordering the then capacity number of the stadium not to be exceeded.

Since then, it has become a major media event and a source of competition. Saban uses it as a major recruiting tool as well.

SEC schools have higher attendance for some spring games than half of the division one teams do during the regular season contests. After a three month absence from football, those fans would come just to watch the team do exercises and warm up drills, much more a full fledged scrimmage game.

Though not every school releases numbers in attendance for the spring games, here is a list of the attendance at some of the spring games from colleges that did release those figures.

Alabama: 92,310
Nebraska: 66,784
Florida State: 53,818
Auburn: 53,209
Florida: 51,000
Georgia: 43,177
Arkansas: 42,000
Mississippi State: 36,357
Tennessee: 35,891
South Carolina: 29,451
Texas: 29,541
Mississippi: 28,000
Notre Dame: 27,863
Clemson: 27,000
Oklahoma: 25,598
LSU: 25,032
North Carolina: 15,500
Texas A&M: 16,500
Oklahoma State: 16,000
Colorado: 15,655
NC State: 13,139
Texas Tech: 12,400
Missouri: 10,000
Arizona: 4,500
Iowa State: 4,000
Baylor: 3,500