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As of right now, it seems like seeing college football games being played in full stadiums this season is about as likely as UCF actually winning a legitimate national title. With that being said, there seems to be a possibility that some schools could host games with limited capacity. One of those schools looking into that scenario is Ohio State.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith told reporters on Wednesday that the university has looked into ways where fans could be allowed into the stadium. Ohio Stadium can hold almost 105,000 fans, but in this scenario, there would likely be less than 30,000, socially distance fans allowed through the gates.
“We have played a little bit with the social distancing concept and we know that probably would take us down south of 30,000 fans in the stands, actually closer to 20-22,000,” Smith said according to Yahoo Sports. “So we’ve played with that as a framework to start as we move forward and would ultimately be allowed to do.”
On paper the idea makes a lot of sense and follows certain guidelines that health officials have put forth over the past couple of months, but it would be far from easy to actually pull this type of thing off.
First of all, let’s say you allow 20,000 fans through the gates. Are you telling me those fans, plus thousands of others won’t be tailgating prior to the game? If you can cut out the tailgating aspect, then maybe you can pull this off by literally making certain parts of the stadium off-limits, maybe even putting plastic barriers around certain sections. Regardless, it’s going to be a complete mess if this happens.
Also, who is one of the lucky 20,000 to actually get a ticket? Will there be age restrictions?
Sure, having 20,000 fans attend a game is better than having none at all, but it may be much tougher to pull off than how it sounds.