Attendance isn’t a perfect measure of fan interest, particularly for a program like Vanderbilt, which has a lot of alumni who don’t live close to Nashville and mostly have to follow the team on the teevee and the interwebs.
But it’s a pretty decent measure, so long as you know what the numbers you’re looking at mean. Vanderbilt drew 30,304 fans for its home opener against South Carolina.
To put that number in context, the 2015 home opener against Western Kentucky -- a Conference USA team -- drew 30,307. The 2014 home opener against Temple drew 31,731.