Florida Football: Is reducing capacity in The Swamp a good idea?

We get it; not every time Florida football takes the field are there going to be 90,000 human beings interested in sweating their tails off to watch the Gators. Games like Florida vs Eastern Washington exist so people with children (hey, that’s me) can go to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium with their two year old and not have to worry that someone is going to puke on their son.

But to permanently take away the option for The Swamp ever to hold 90,000 fans seems like a drastic measure, but there is an indication that with the upcoming renovations, that capacity could be significantly reduced.

Florida Football: We must protect this house

The University of Florida announced last week official plans to move forward with $400 million worth of renovations to The Swamp. The overall goal is to make the fan experience as top-notch as possible.

There have been plans floating around since 2019 that would reduce capacity, and Chip Howard, the Executive Associate Athletics Director at Florida, hinted over the weekend that the Gators could, in fact, reduce capacity to as low as 75,000 fans.

This has not gone over well with Gator fans.

Dedicated Florida fan and blogger Neil Shulman, who runs the website In All Kinds Of Weather, has started a petition to reject reducing capacity by 15,000 fans. The petition is already over 1,400 signatures in under 24 hours.

He also touched on the subject in his recent podcast.

To his point, Gator fans have shown they will show up when the opponent warrants showing up. If Florida football fills its schedule with teams like Charlotte, most fans won’t be interested in that.

But when playing teams like Utah, and in the future Colorado and Arizona State, as part of the non-conference schedule, Gator fans will show up.

So does it make sense to turn Ben Hill Griffin Stadium into an NFL venue when it would take away what The Swamp can be at max capacity?

For our money, the answer is no. Sure, USF and UCF need to stick to 40,000 seats, but it doesn’t make sense for UF to go that route. If the goal is to keep fans engaged, then you want as many fans as possible to be able to be engaged.

So to that point, if 85,000 fans are willing to show up as long as you put on an engaging product, why restrict how many fans can experience your product?

Wider seats are nice in theory, but most of us are standing throughout the game as is.

As we chronicled on the site last week, give us shade and a better sound system, and we are good.

This will be a defining moment for Scott Stircklin. Get it wrong, and it doesn’t matter if Florida football wins the national championship.

Gator Nation will still want him gone.

May the odds forever be in his favor.