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August 22 – The University of Georgia set a new NCAA Division I soccer attendance record on Thursday, drawing 25,433 spectators to Sanford Stadium for a 6-0 rout of James Madison. And it poses a genuine question. Is the college game simply riding World Cup momentum, or has college soccer in America finally, decisively turned a corner after years as a footnote? The new mark shattered the previous women’s record of 14,410, set back in 1999, and also eclipsed the men’s record of 22,512 from 1980. Records that stood for decades, gone in a single night. And here’s what makes it especially telling. It was the women who broke it. Not just the women’s record, but the overall record, men’s included. It’s another sign that the women’s game, particularly in America, is now genuinely mainstream viewing, an event people buy tickets for and turn up to in their tens of thousands. The football matched the occasion. Mya Townes opened the scoring inside eight minutes, Honoka Hamano grabbed a brace including the fourth, and Georgia were 3-0 up by half time before running out comfortable winners in front of a raucous crowd. Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]