South Carolina AD Ray Tanner said the university is running models on how to social distance, an interesting development, even for Clemson football fans.
Clemson football fans, along with the rest of the country, are waiting word on the future of the 2020 College Football season.
Some analysts have suggested that it won’t happen until January of 2021 or that it could be completely canceled. Others have said the season may be pushed back to an October start and that, perhaps, only conference games will be played before the postseason.
Of course, it’s not just the question of if football will be played. It’s the question of if fans will be allowed to attend. Will we see 80,000 Clemson football fans in Death Valley in 2020?
While no one knows what the College Football season will look like, South Carolina AD Ray Tanner spoke at a school town hall and had some interesting comments.
South Carolina AD Ray Tanner: "Social distancing will be in place at Williams-Brice and our other venues. We are running models to see what kind of attendance we could have."
— Josh Kendall (@JoshTheAthletic) May 6, 2020
Tanner is suggesting that he wants to see Williams-Brice Stadium with fans this season, but that we might see a limited capacity.
Now, I know that many Clemson football fans have hundreds of jokes that come to their mind when it comes to capacity and South Carolina football, the fact of the matter is that we could see many colleges running these same kinds of models.
College Football needs fans in the stands because of the revenue. Some major colleges make millions of dollars each week in revenue from concessions stands, ticket revenue and souvenirs bought.
Clemson football has a unique economy of small businesses that rely upon those seven Saturdays each year to fill their bottom line.
That being said, there are still plenty of questions as to how you practice social distancing in a major venue- even if the capacity is limited.
Theoretically you can social distance in the stands, but how do you do the bathrooms? The concession stands? The elevators? Etc. https://t.co/TyYlqf7CJF
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) May 6, 2020
These questions are going to remain and likely won’t be answered for a while. This is an ever-changing landscape and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Could you imagine Death Valley with 40,000 fans instead of 80,000? Is that what we will see this season? Only time will tell.
The State Newspaper reports that some experts say capacity would have to be limited to 15-35 percent. That would mean we could see Death Valley with 12,000-30,000 fans if that is the model that is chosen in the end.