Almost one million of your best friends watched the Gamecocks play

Almost 1 million fans watched the South Carolina Gamecocks play football in the 2017 season, according to figures released by the NCAA on Tuesday.

A total of 988,456 saw the Gamecocks’ 13 games this past season, which ranked 13th in the country in the all games (home, road and neutral) category.

For seven home games, the Gamecocks had an average attendance of 78,586, which ranked 16th in the country. The total home attendance was 550,099.

USC’s average home attendance was up 1,666 per game (from 76,920 to 78,586), which ranked as the 23rd best increase.

But overall in the SEC, the average attendance per game dropped to 75,074 in 2017, down from 77,507 in 2016. It was the lowest average attendance since the SEC expanded from 12 teams to 14 in 2012.

Clemson was 14th in the nation with an average home attendance per game of 80,773. The Tigers had a total attendance of 1,016,347 in 14 games.

According to NCAA numbers, more than 34 million watched games at the 129 Football Bowl Subdivision schools in 2017 with the average home attendance at 42,108, down 2.2 percent from last season.

The attendance at bowl games was down for the seventh straight season with an average of 40,506 fans. That’s down 1,200 per game from 2016.

The Big Ten was the only Power 5 conference to increase its attendance, going to 66,227 in 2017 from 66,151 in 2016.

This story was originally published February 13, 2018 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Almost one million of your best friends watched the Gamecocks play."