Syracuse football: debunking some myths about Friday night home attendance

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The Syracuse Orange football team’s 2026 schedule features quite an outlier: there will not be a Friday home game.

For context, this hasn’t happened in a while. The 2013 season, Syracuse’s first as a member of the ACC, marks the last time the program had no home game on a Friday. While it was a more common trend earlier this century (see: 2006, 2008, 2009, and 201o), it’s been over a decade since it last occurred.

That got us here at TNIAAM thinking: just how big a deal is this actually? What’s the value of having a game on Friday night versus, say, any given Saturday? What does the math have to say about this?

We wanted to see how Friday home attendance compared to the rest of the home schedule in a given year, compare all the numbers, and tie everything up.

So, we finished our degree from the Daryl Morey School of Analytics and then got to work crunching down all the data.

Here was our process/methodology:

• We went back and dug up all the home attendance numbers from the last 10 years (2015 to 2025)
• Why 10 years? Sample size and variance are the biggest reasons. With an entire decade, we include pre- and post-pandemic data, great and not-so-great seasons for the Orange, plus dozens of different opponents and kickoff times.
• The 2020 home season schedule was excluded for… obvious reasons.
• All reported home attendance figures are according to Cuse.com, which had a super-majority of them. The only exceptions were for all of the 2015 and 2016 seasons, plus a handful of games from 2021. For these, we used the stats according to ESPN.
• For each game, we documented the opponent, day of the home game, kickoff time, and attendance.

In total, there have been 65 games in the then-Carrier/now-JMA Wireless Dome since 2015. Fourteen of them (21.5%) happened on Friday. The other roughly 80% took place on Saturday.

After doing all that, there were certainly some interesting takeaways.

For starters, in all 10 seasons, we compared the average attendance in a given year to what the attendance was for any games that happened on a Friday.

Between 2015 and 2025, Syracuse had at least one Friday game in the Dome. In four of the seasons, there were two (2016, 2017, 2021, and 2025). Kickoff times for all 14 of them over the last decade were either at 7 pm, 7:30 pm, or 8 pm.

What we found: the average home attendance of a given season beat out the Friday night attendance in eight of the 14 games. For the other six Friday night contests, those games filled up the Dome more than in an average game in that particular year.

Across all 14 Friday home games between 2015 and 2025, average attendance was 36,545. For the rest of the home slate during this time frame, it was 35,946, a difference of exactly 599.

A few points to consider. Of the 14 Friday home games, there were 10 unique opponents and two opponents Syracuse played at twice on this day over the last decade (Clemson and Louisville). Bringing this up because it bears noting that both Clemson games were better than average attendance by several thousand. Clemson in 2017 was the biggest outlier: the difference was over 8,500 between the two figures.

Additionally, it’s clear non-conference games on a Friday don’t do well compared to conference games. That does make sense, but it helps to quantify it.

Of Syracuse’s 14 Friday night games over the past decade, nine were against the ACC. Five weren’t. The best five home Friday games were all ACC opponents. Four non-con Friday night games all ranked at the bottom (cresting with Liberty in 2021 at 29,942). The one exception was Colgate in 2025 (37,372), but keep in mind, it was also the Orange’s season-opener.

Combined, these two points are important because arguably, they cancel each other out in some ways. On the one hand, there is some “aura” in a Friday night game. It’s just different compared to the rest of the home schedule. It’s both consistent and convenient (fans will never see Syracuse start a game on a Friday at 12 pm or 3:30 pm… ever).

On the other hand, there’s also more variance in any given season. One year, fans get peak Clemson. In another, they’re stuck with the Colgates and Rhode Islands of opponents.

This is something that affects the non-con games of any kind for Syracuse. Of the 10 worst-attended home games in the last decade, six were non-con. Two were on Friday, the other four were on Saturday.

Moving on from the averages, we also wanted to see how Fridays compared to Saturdays as standalone games.

The results:

• One Friday game (Pittsburgh in 2019) cracked the top five for highest-attended games over the last 10 years. The top four were all Saturday, peaking with Clemson in 2019. The other three, coincidentally, all occurred during the 2022 season (Notre Dame, NC State, and Florida State).
• Four Friday games cracked the top 15. Louisville in 2018, Boston College in 2023, and Clemson in 2017 were No. 10, No. 11, and No. 12 out of 65.
• In the top half of most-attended games (top 32 out of 65), exactly a quarter of them (eight) were on Fridays. Outside the contests mentioned above, there was also Stanford in 2024 (No. 20), Colgate in 2025 (No. 27), North Carolina in 2025 (No. 29), and Clemson in 2021 (No. 32).
• No Friday games were bottom-five in attendance, but five of the 14 were in the bottom-15. The full list: Louisville in 2016 (No. 50), Colgate in 2016 (No. 53), Central Connecticut St. in 2017 (No. 55), Rhode Island in 2015 (No. 58), and Liberty in 2021 (No. 59).

Here’s the full chart from the last decade:

When also looking into the data, we mentioned kickoff times were an important component to sort out. The comparison shouldn’t be limited to Friday night versus any given time on Saturday.

So, we also calculated the averages for the following four categories:

• Fridays (which were all at night, aka at or after 7 pm)
• Saturday early-afternoon (any nooners or games that started before 2 pm)
• Saturday afternoon (games between 2 pm and 5 pm)
• Saturday night (kickoffs at or after 7 pm)

Using all the data above, here were the final tallies:

• Friday night: 36,545 (14 games)
• Saturday early-afternoon: 36,868 (25 games)
• Saturday afternoon: 34,923 (20 games)
• Saturday night: 40,342 (6 games)

The Saturday night games have the highest average (over 3,400 more than second-place of the four categories), but also the smallest sample size. That does make sense: it is fair for Syracuse to be on Saturday primetime, given the history. When it does get in that exact slot, it’s usually because both *it is good and so is the opponent.

The biggest shock, which has the largest sample size, is that Saturday nooners are the most consistent. Of all 65 home games, 12 of the top 25 all kicked off Saturday at noon. Friday nights finished third among the four groups, albeit with only a difference of 323 from second place.

Of the 65 games, we also calculated the average ranking for the games in those slots. An average Saturday night game had an average ranking of 21, followed by Saturday early-afternoon at 31, Friday night at just under 33, and Saturday afternoon at 39.

Average attendance rankings for the games in each group:

• Friday night: 32.86
• Saturday early-afternoon: 31
• Saturday afternoon: 39
• Saturday night: 21

All that said, looking ahead to the 2026 slate for attendance purposes and with there being no Friday games, the more games early on Saturday, the better the numbers. If one or even two can make it on Saturday night, by some miracle, even better. Saturday afternoon: not advised.

Now it’s your turn: what stands out the most to you from our deep-dive into attendance numbers? Is it a big deal that Syracuse has no Friday night games?

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