Spring games happen in early April every year. The football is unsignal-rich; the attendance is not. When 80,000 people show up to watch a glorified scrimmage, somebody on that fanbase is awake to the season. When a program draws 12,000, somebody is hung over from the year before.
Texas drew 84,000 to DKR. Penn State drew 71,000 to Beaver Stadium. Tennessee drew 65,000 to Neyland. Auburn — defending an SEC West title — drew 41,000, the lowest mark since 2018. The numbers are the offseason's first honest scoreboard.
We are not predicting from spring-game gates. We are saying: the gate is the first vote the fanbase casts, and it's a more honest vote than any board post or radio call-in. Showing up costs four hours of a Saturday. Programs whose fans showed up in April are programs whose fans want to be in the room when August comes.
Eight in. The rest of the field, this April, was somewhere else.