How Ole Miss athletics has prepared to host college football games through the pandemic
OXFORD — Take a minute to think about just how unlikely this outcome was. Ole Miss senior linebacker Lakia Henry has.
"It's been a rollercoaster ride man," Henry said. "Really. For us to be here right now is unreal."
It's all led to this. Ole Miss football players have endured six months of postponements, cancelations, mask wearing, social distancing, isolation from loved ones and swabs up noses for this weekend.
SEC football returns to Oxford on Saturday.
Ole Miss hosts No. 6 Florida at 11 a.m. on Saturday in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. It will be the first SEC football game of the season, along with Kentucky versus Auburn which kicks off at the same time.
Things are going to look different. Vaught-Hemingway Stadium will be limited to 25% capacity. On-campus tailgating is forbidden, meaning The Grove and all its traditions are off limits. Fans have to wear face coverings unless they're eating or drinking. Elevators will be limited to five passengers per trip. The marching band won't be allowed to perform on the field before games or during halftime.
But that's all part of playing football during the COVID-19 pandemic. If it wasn't for these precautions, there wouldn't be a game to host.
"What we're trying to do is continue the season," Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter told the Clarion Ledger. "We don't want three or four days after the game for there to be a giant spike in Mississippi because everyone went to the Ole Miss game. We just want to make sure we're being safe and following protocols so we can continue and hopefully get through this season."
More:Deion Sanders, Mike Leach and Lane Kiffin? Mississippi's college football's fun capital
The fan experience
Tracking attendance will be a fascinating pursuit in 2020.
Per an executive order from Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, Ole Miss can only allow 16,010 spectators into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium per game this season. As of Tuesday, Carter told the Clarion Ledger Ole Miss was still about 2,000 sales shy of hitting that new sellout number.
"Understand this is an issue that's kind of going on around the country," Carter said. "People are not selling as many as they thought they would. Hopefully we'll have a great game Saturday and interest will pop up."
Carter is right on his first assertion. Schools aren't hitting their updated capacities early in the season.
For example, Notre Dame is allowing about 15,000 fans to come to games but reported an attendance of 10,097 for its home opener against Duke. Then there's Texas, which is allowing up to 25,000 fans come to games this fall, only hosted 15,337 fans for the season opener against UTEP.
It's easy to explain this trend. Some fans just aren't ready to go to big social gatherings yet with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to spread throughout the United States. Or, as Carter sees it, those fans just need to see a gameday experience can be safe.
"They want to see how the game's going to function and how it's going to work," Carter said. "I think if we can show a safe environment this Saturday then we'll have higher attendance for the next home games."
As of Wednesday, Ole Miss is only reporting 41 active cases of COVID-19 across its students, faculty and staff. That's down from an initial spike of more than 200 in early September when the semester began. On top of that, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has reported back-to-back weeks with zero positive test cases in the football program.
Carter said he's confident the campus and facilities will be safe for fans who visit Oxford this season. Most of the archived positive cases from athletics and the general student body, Carter says, happened at off-campus gatherings and parties.
Because of this, Carter said he never considered hosting games in an empty stadium or eliminating student ticketing. Students will still get around 2,500 tickets per game and approximately half of the marching band will be in the stadium, socially distanced from one another in the stands.
"Our hope is that if these cases continue to decline and things continue to get better that the governor may allow us to have a higher percentage in down the road," Carter said.
The game itself
Carter's big concern about attendance is what happens when fans enter and exit games. His aim is to avoid clusters and bottlenecks of people at gates because that's where the highest risk of congregation can happen.
Kiffin has different concerns. Football concerns. Injuries. Matchups. Schemes.
The COVID-19 pandemic adds a few more concerns onto a coach's plate. But Kiffin said things are mostly going to be same-as for his team when it comes to gameday preparations.
There are a couple small changes. To accommodate proper social distancing, Kiffin said he's trying to make sure the meeting room at the team hotel is bigger than usual. He also said the team will probably take more buses to the stadium than normal so players aren't as cramped as they'd usually be.
If players are nervous to play in this environment, it's not because of COVID.
"It's going to be butterflies as usual," Henry said. "But once that first play is over the jitters are gone and it's time to play football. There's going to be a lot of emotion in that game but we've just got to stay composed and weather the storm."
Henry said this season is about "making the best of it." He said he understands there's a world where Ole Miss doesn't get to play its 10-game schedule in full. Cancelations are always possible with the specter of the novel coronavirus looming. But just getting the chance to play is what he's missed.
More:Ole Miss football releases depth chart in advance of Lane Kiffin's first game vs. Florida
Football players aren't the only people who need football back. As Carter mentioned, the Oxford economy is largely dependent on football weekends. Hotels, bars, restaurants and shops are all subject to the same COVID-19 safety protocols as the university and the rest of the state, but a busy football weekend could be a positive step towards revitalizing some of the businesses that have suffered through the pandemic.
That's one of many reasons why Carter said he's proud the SEC has made the decisions it has that allowed for this weekend to be a possibility.
"I think we've really done the right thing," Carter said. "We've made good decisions. We've waited until we had the proper information to make decisions. And I think we're seeing now that it's paying off. We waited a little bit and I think we're going to have a great opening day Saturday and it's going to be a fun year."'
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately reported the stadium capacity allowed at Louisville this season. Louisville is allowing around 12,000 fans to attend games, not 18,00
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.
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Three Heisman Trophy winners: Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996), Tim Tebow (2007)
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