Muschamp thought South Carolina fans were ‘tremendous’ in Charlotte

Neutral site college football games can be tricky from the atmosphere side.

Sometimes neither fanbase is highly local, meaning they can’t rely on the highest concentration of nearby fans to make a short trip over. The crowd trends more toward evenly split and the tailgating is just little different in a city or NFL stadium’s lots at compared to on campus.

But when South Carolina rolled into Charlotte on Saturday to face N.C. State in Bank of America Stadium, the performance of its fans left the coach pleased.

“Our crowd was tremendous,” Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp said. “Really appreciate Gamecock nation coming and supporting us. Certainly this is an area that’s extremely important to us as far as recruiting and the (foot)print of where we need to be successful.”

The overall attendance was a modest 50,367, a number that seemed a bit swallowed up by the 75,000-plus seat stadium. The lower bowl was just about full, and appeared to be about evenly split between the teams.

In big moments, both groups seemed to get loud enough, USC’s especially for big plays.

South Carolina fans had a shorter drive by about 70 miles and ranked 17th nationally in attendance last season with 76,920. The Wolfpack fans had to make a 2 1/2 hour drive and averaged 57,497 (granted, that’s just short of what their stadium holds).

This story was originally published September 3, 2017 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Muschamp thought South Carolina fans were ‘tremendous’ in Charlotte."