Game Day Belongs to the Girls Too

The Wednesday before BYU football kicked off against No. 2 Notre Dame, students were already lining up for ESPN’s College GameDay , which came to campus to broadcast... on Saturday. For days, students camped out in the chilly fall weather for a chance to get close to BYU football legends and sponsors like Steve Young, Puka Nacua, and Pat McAfee. On game day itself, thousands more students flocked to the stadium. The scene was similar inside the stadium. The student section was completely full more than two hours before kickoff. By nightfall, 65,179 fans had packed the stadium . They watched Bear Bachmeier throw a go-ahead touchdown with 1:47 left and BYU stop Notre Dame at the goal line to win 28–24. Fireworks went off; a tidal wave of blue promptly poured onto the field in front of a national audience. Who’s In The Student Section In that tidal wave were thousands of women. Football has long been framed as a man’s game —men on the field, men in the booth, men in the merch ads. But anyone standing in BYU’s student section—the ROC—on Saturday could see that the energy pouring into the stands belonged to both genders. Male students in jerseys, pounding their chests. Female students jumping up and down at every first down, royal blue hair ribbons jumping with them. A 2025 poll found that women make up 47% of the NFL’s American fan base. Women aren’t tagging along to watch football; they’re transforming the sport with their fandom. Nearly 684 million women globally identify as sports fans, with half of these women developing their fandom in the last five years. A 2025 poll found that women make up 47% of the NFL’s American fan base. College football isn’t far behind—41% of at-home College Football Playoff viewers one season were women . Some of this is generating women’s interest in playing the sport themselves—high school girls flag football participation rose 48.7% in a single year , from 68,847 to 102,360, and the sport cracked the top 10 most popular girls sports; meanwhile, women’s flag football will debut at the 2028 Olympics, but women are also passionate about the men’s sport, as well. The Taylor Swift Effect, By The Numbers Women’s fandom is leaving a mark on sport’s numbers as well as its optics. When Taylor Swift showed up to a Chiefs game in October 2023, Sunday Night Football viewership jumped 53% among girls aged 12 to 17 compared to the season’s first three weeks, adding more than 2 million female viewers overall. By that winter’s playoffs, Swift was wearing a custom Chiefs puffer jacket . When women enter something, they don’t necessarily rewrite it: they beautify it. When women enter something, they don’t necessarily rewrite it: they beautify it. Case in point: women have made game day into an event of its own . In the South, it was ordinary by the 1960s for a college woman to show up to a game in pearls and her best dress. Today, students make mood boards for each game and coordinate their colors against the opposing teams. Female BYU students dress in their nicest royal blues, wear glitter on their cheeks, and post group photos to Instagram from the arena, combining glamour and fandom into one. Still A Man’s Game Of course, football, at its heart, is a man’s sport. The game on the field is built on size, speed, and collision. Its appeal is unapologetically masculine: grown men bashing each other, coaches barking orders from the sideline, a makeshift war in pads and helmets. Plenty of women love it for just that reason. Women showing up in the stands certainly isn’t softening the game; they’re actually far from pitching a takeover. Sam Rapoport, who created the NFL Women’s Forum, has said that she isn’t a proponent of the tagline “the future is female” when it comes to sports. “I think the future is balanced,” she told Variety . ESPN’s Laura Rutledge has made a similar point to fans grumbling about Swifties crowding the sport, asking how more people like a sport you already like could possibly be a problem. The guys get the game; the girls get game day. That’s the beauty of it all. Women aren’t trying to make football less of a guy thing. They’re adding to it—filling up extra seats, posting game publicity to Instagram with cute game day outfits , pouring their money into accessories and ticket sales. The guys get the game; the girls get game day. And in Provo, game day starts long before kickoff, with dividends that pay off long after. The People Are The Point Anna Naef, a BYU student who survived long lines and rising ticket costs to snag a seat at the BYU–Notre Dame game, made the point concisely. “The excitement in the stadium with the music, entertaining acts, and just [the] general feeling of community is what makes college football worth it,” she said. This is the part of sports that many female sports fans seem to agree on: the game is the excuse—the people are the point. The roommate who screams louder than anyone on third down, the girl on a second date who casually drops a stat and watches her date’s jaw hit the bleachers, the family who bonds over a team’s wins and losses. “My favorite thing about football is that it is something that helps me get closer to people I love,” Naef said. On Saturday evenings in Provo, when the light turns gold above the mountains and the field turns blue with a sea of students, it’s impossible to argue.