Odds Set for College Football Attendance, How May It Affect the Gators?

Many changes will occur for this year's upcoming college football season, potential attendance has been debated, but how will it actually be affected?

Due to the on-going pandemic caused by COVID-19, the Florida Gators and all college football teams across the nation will have plenty of challenges, that includes attendance.

According to SportsBettingDime.com (SBD),   13.62 million fans are projected to attend Division-I College Football games, a 63% decrease from the 36,831,692 fans that attended the 888 regular season and bowl games last year, according to SBD.

While there has been much speculation, there has been no official word regarding whether or not there will be many fans - in any capacity - at games, or whether or not fans will simply be limited. For the National Football League, Sports Business Journal's Ben Fischer reported teams will be allowed to sell "camera-visible signage", potentially covering the first six to eight rows of seating prohibited for fans.

The college football landscape could take a similar path, however, none of that is yet known and there has been no clarification from neither the Gators themselves nor the NCAA as a whole.

SBD does not specify odds or projected attendance for the Gators specifically, however, they do project the potential decline for the SEC, slated to be a 55% decline (32,725) down from the 2019 average of 72,723 people in attendance. SBD also projects the over/under for College Football Division-I games to be played at 37.5 out of the total 44.

For more reference, Nebraska, which had a similar average attendance (89,348) to Florida (84,684) in 2019 is projected to have an over/under of 42,700 fans in attendance, a decrease of 46% from 2019. The Gators could see their games played seemingly half full.

The major effects of a fanless-college football couldn't be quantified, not for teams with historically-high attendance numbers. However, for betting purposes, it appears not much was affected. The Gators remain high on the odds list to win a national championship with 24/1 odds, while Clemson is set at 4/1 odds - the highest of any team.

There's still plenty to happen between now and the opening day of college football, and as of right now, the Gators are planning for the season to begin as scheduled, slated to open their fall camp on August 7th. But, the question remains, how many fans will be there when it happens?