Lowest NFL Game Attendance on Record

What is the lowest attendance ever for an NFL game? Well, who knows. It is not an easy data point to mine. But we doormat fans love these kinds of stats, so pull up your Barcalounger, crack open a cellar temp Ranier, and open a can of peanuts as we take a walk through low attendance history.

Now, on Wiki Answers, someone posted that in 1987, the year of the NFL player strike, the Dolphins played the Cowboys in front of 216 fans. That would be Doormat history as the lowest attendance ever for an NFL game. But hey, that was Wiki Answers. It would be wonderful if that were true. Surely somewhere in that season is a very low attendance. the NFL claims average "paid" attention was over 58,000. But an "average" can be misleading. (http://www.nfl.com/history/chronology/1981-1990.)

The fact is, the two weeks of replacement players resulted in some awful attendance that year. The games had little legitimacy with fans and attendance plummeted to under 10,000 at many games in smaller (i.e. "doormat") markets. Including a low of 4,074 for the lone replacement game played in Philadelphia on Oct. 4 when the Bears trounced the Eagles 35-3 ( "NFL crossed the line on Replacement Sunday." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, September 16, 2017).

However, that was a strike situation. We have searched through numerous databases, and have not found a reliable number for attendance at a modern era (post Super Bowl I) regular season, non "scab" game. We are digging for the answer.

Let's face it, NFL attendance reports are usually a tally of ticket sales, not butts in the seats. So the reported attendance you see in the paper--the paper? what's that?-- does not really tell the story.

One modern possibility is the infamous "Snow Bowl," played in Green Bay by the Packers and Buccaneers in 1985 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Bowl_%281985%29). It was heavy snow, there was no TV blackout, and only 19,856 were in attendance (according to sources at the game, but this is not an official NFL number), with over 36,000 "no-shows."

Also in modern history, besides the Snow Bowl, the Houston Oilers played Tampa Bay in 1995 (the last season of the Oilers) in the Astrodome to a reported 31,485 sold seats (but people who were there claim not half of those sold seats actually had people in them). Estimates for this game are under 15,000, but no data to confirm that exists. So we will go with the lowest official NFL reported attendance in the modern era of 31, 485 (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/199510290oti.htm).

But if we want to get in the Wayback Machine and slip into the Roaring 20s, we find the Columbus Panhandles (who were winless in the NFL that year) opening against the Akron Pros before 3,000 distracted fans at beautiful Elks Field in Akron. Akron took that doormat classic 36-0. (Pro Football Reference, https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/192210010akr.htm.) This would be the lowest recorded attendance at an NFL game.

By the way, the Panhandles did not win a game that year. Doormat history! The first team to go winless in an NFL season (it was the first NFL season). Not too many years later most of that team, and the owners, were out panhandling for real. Very fitting that Columbus hosted the Panhandles and the doormat tradition continues today with both Ohio teams as perennial face plants. Ohio may be the Doormat State. But there are two great things from Akron: the lowest NFL attendance and Devo.

We are going to keep digging on this important story and get a confirmation of the lowest attended game in modern (since Super Bowl I) history.