College football continues to see attendance declines, and for the seventh straight season, attendance dropped, as nationally, the average attendance in 2021 was down 15 percent, more than 7,000 per game, from a record mark of 46,971 in 2008.

Last season marked the seventh straight year and ninth year in the last 10 that FBS attendance has declined. The NCAA has been tracking FBS attendance since 1976, two years before then-Division I-AA (Football Championship Subdivision) was created, Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports reported.

However, 1 SEC program is standing as an outlier among those trends — Arkansas.

Razorback Nation has wrapped its heart around coach Sam Pittman to the point Arkansas had the second-highest attendance gain among FBS teams in 2021, a whopping 14,353 fans per game, compared to the last full season in 2019. The Hogs are coming off their best season in a decade (9-4) after they started 4-0, a run that included the first win over Texas at home in 40 years.

Arkansas is also an extreme outlier. FBS attendance last season hit its lowest point in those same four decades years, according to annual figures compiled by the NCAA. The average for the division’s 130 teams slipped to 39,848 fans per game. That’s the fewest since 1981 when the average was 34,621.

SEC Commissioner raised the key point to reverse the trend.

“There’s plenty of, if you will, negativity around the collegiate sports world,” he said. “People have said, ‘Well, these decisions won’t affect fan interest.’ Well, something certainly is. It’s not just TV. It’s not just COVID. We have to rethink our approach on key issues. That’s almost a Captain Obvious moment.”

Here are some interesting SEC points brought up by Dodd:

For the 23rd consecutive year, the SEC led the country in attendance with 72,195 fans per game. Still, the nation’s most football crazy league was not immune from the trend. The SEC suffered an attendance decline for a fifth consecutive year since an all-time high of 78,630 in 2015. Even though the average decline from 2019 was minimal (528 fans per game), the SEC posted its lowest average attendance since 1999.

Nine of the league’s 14 teams experienced attendance declines ranging to the curious to the profound. In a championship year, Georgia lost attendance, though it was microscopic drop of 71 fans per game. South Carolina was down more than 8,000 fans per game (coming off a 4-8 season in 2019) despite a bounce back campaign that saw coach Shane Beamer finish 7-6.

At Arkansas, there isn’t much worry about attendance in the moment. Only Rutgers, up 14,458 fans per game, had a higher average increase in 2021. Arkansas’ second-ranked baseball team just drew 30,000 for a three-game series with Illinois State. Eric Musselman’s basketball team just saw 19,000 attend a Saturday win against Tennessee.

Razorback Stadium was raucous again in 2021, filled with an average of 65,284 fans, a record at least since the venue was expanded in 2018. Projected 2022 season tickets (45,000) are up more than 10,000 from two years ago, a disastrous 2-10 season. Ticket revenue is projected to be up to $36 million from $10 million.

Armed with that hype and promise, the 2022 home schedule could be its own Netflix documentary; Alabama, Ole Miss and LSU come to town with Bobby Petrino returning alongside his Missouri State team.

“It just all kind of fell into place this year,” Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said. “Quite honestly, this has to do with our fan base being the only Power Five team in the state with no other professional team in the state.”