If football can be played, what will it look like?
Athletic directors across the country are facing two major questions right now: Will there be a football season? And if so, what will it look like?
Nobody has the answer to the first question yet. Until they do, the second question doesn’t really even matter. But everyone has to plan for a season unlike any they’ve ever seen and be ready if it can be pulled off.
“Where that normal falls…” Mizzou Director of Athletics Jim Sterk said without conclusion on a teleconference with local media on Thursday afternoon.
The most common question if games can be played is whether anyone will be able to watch them. Sterk referenced a photo that has made the rounds the last few weeks of fans wearing masks at a Georgia Tech game in 1918 in the wake of the Spanish Flu pandemic.
“It can be done,” he said. “We’ll look for the best way to do it.”
Sterk did say that full stadiums this fall are unlikely. The question is just how much attendance will have to be limited. The Miami Dolphins released a plan for reduced crowds this season, basing a plan on 15,000 fans per game—about 23% of Hard Rock Stadium capacity—to allow for social distancing among those in attendance.
“They want to feel safe and they want to go to sporting events because that’s their normal life,” Sterk said. “What we have to do is really make the people feel comfortable by the fall of going to an event as best we can. Does that mean 10 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent of the facility? I don’t know.”
For all athletic directors, capacity reduced that far would cause a brand new set of problems. Missouri sold approximately 29,000 season tickets in 2019 including students. Going off of 25% capacity, the Tigers would be able to host between 15 and 16,000 fans per game. That means there are 13,000 season ticket holders from a year ago who would be denied a chance to go to games—and that’s without considering any tickets for opponents or single game sales. How does the department determine who gets those tickets?
“I’ll kick that can as long and far as I can until July 15th,” Sterk said, referencing the date by which most feel a determination on the season needs to happen.
Sterk said Missouri is tracking behind last year’s season ticket numbers for obvious reasons. Missouri has extended its deadline to purchase tickets and make donations to the Tiger Scholarship Fund as well as building in contingencies for fans who purchase tickets if the season is cancelled. But fewer people are buying tickets without any certainty of games being played and with much of the country under financial stress due to the fallout from COVID-19.
Another major issue for Sterk and his peers is that what works for one school or one conference might not work for another. There is no governing body for college football. NCAA President Mark Emmert has made headlines with recent statements about not playing games if students are not on campus, but the NCAA does not run college football. The Southeastern Conference could choose to play while the PAC-12 could choose not to. It’s not out of the question that some schools in a conference could deem it safe to play while others don’t. So much depends on the situations in individual states and the determinations made by local officials and those aren’t going to be uniform across the board. SEC athletic directors have had regular conference calls since mid-March when the men’s basketball tournament was called off.
“We’ve been able to make decisions collectively,” Sterk said. “Do people have different opinions? Yeah, but I think we’re pretty dang close.”
But that may not be the case elsewhere. Take, for example, Brigham Young, which is on Missouri’s schedule in November. The Cougars are not in a conference, playing as an FBS independent, but the Western part of the country seems currently more hesitant to open up. Reports are already out that Alabama is searching for a replacement for its season opening game against USC should the Trojans be unable to start the season at the same time as the Crimson Tide. Sterk said Missouri has not yet had any discussions with its non-conference opponents about not being able to play as scheduled.
“As of right now we’re taking it as is that we’ll be able to play,” Sterk said. “As we get closer to that July date we’ll be making sure that they’re still online.”
All kinds of options are on the table. Right now, all are hypothetical. There could be some clarity, at least in the SEC, following a May 22nd call with Chancellors and Presidents of the league schools. But until at least then, as Sterk said, “anything of an opinion right now is a guess and it most likely will be wrong.”