Inside The Huskies

Michigan-UW Sellout Assured for Saturday's Football Game

Capacity at Husky Stadium is 70,138 and more people than that are expected.

Dan Raley

Husky captains Will Rogers, Cam Davis, Kam Fabiculanan and Alphonzo Tuputala meet for the coin toss.
Husky captains Will Rogers, Cam Davis, Kam Fabiculanan and Alphonzo Tuputala meet for the coin toss. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Jedd Fisch got his wish.

On Tuesday, the school announced that Saturday's Washington-Michigan football game was a sellout for 70,138-seat Husky Stadium, that all tickets have been sold for the rematch between the teams that played in this past January's CFP national championship game in Houston.

To begin the week, Fisch had called for the place to be at full capacity if not exceed the number of seats available when the Huskies (3-2 overall, 1-1 Big Ten) host the Wolverines (4-1, 2-0).

"It's going to be a great atmosphere," the Husky coach said. "I'd be shocked if it wasn't absolutely slammed in the stadium with hopefully 75,000 and we can get in trouble for being 2,000 over."

With Husky Stadium's current configuration, a school official said the game probably won't exceed the 71,321 who attended the UW-Oregon football game a year ago, which is about the most it can get now.

The current record turnout is 76,125 for the 1995 UW-Army game, when the stadium had extra seating before it was renovated 18 years later. Through 2007, that was one of 13 games that exceeded 74,000.

One of them was against Michigan, always a big draw in Seattle, which in 2001 drew 74,080 to Husky Stadium to see the home team take a 23-18 win over the Wolverines.

In three previous Michigan visits, the Wolverines attracted just 37,416 fans in 1954, largely because the UW program was on a downswing, headed soon for NCAA-related penalties and the dissolution of the Pacific Coast Conference because the Huskies and others were operating slush funds to play their players.

In 1970, the Sonny Sixiller-led Huskies hosted Michigan to a sellout crowd of 58,108 and, in 1983, a Don James team played in front of another capacity turnout of 60,638 and staged a fourth-quarter comeback to pull out a last-second 25-24 victory.

Saturday's game-day environment -- with a 4:30 p.m. kickoff coverage and an NBC national TV broadcast -- promises to be electric.

"I hope every student comes out and stands on each other's shoulders so there's no space," Fisch said. "We're going to need the crowd and the energy."

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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