Never and always are two words that should be used carefully.
Scott Stadium's capacity was only 44,000 through the 1999 season. Then they expanded to 61,500 in 2000.
I was unable to find attendance figures for the 2000 season online at the NCAA's web site.
The Cavaliers, however, averaged a very respectable 55k+ in 2001 and 2002, peaked at 60k+ for three years, then started falling off. 2009 was the first season where there were indications that something really wrong was happening with attendance, and the last three years have been a disaster.
Virginia's average attendance -- I added lines to break up attendance into blocks of 50k, 60k, and 40k:
2001: 56,283
2002: 56,428
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2003: 60,424
2004: 61,494
2005: 60,973
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2006: 57,732
2007: 59,824
2008: 53,815
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2009: 47,986
2010: 45,459
2011: 47,940
2012: 46,650
2013: 46,279
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2014: 39,320
2015: 43,285
2016: 39,929
Anyway, my point is that averaging over 60,000 fans a game, as UVA did from 2003-2005, was respectable, especially for them.
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