South Carolina not yet into the details of who might get into Williams-Brice come fall
As soon as South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner said he expected social distancing to limit the size of football crowds in the fall, the follow-up question emerged.
What will go into the decision of who gets into Gamecocks games?
With Tanner throwing out a number of around 15,000 as a possible limit of fans in the 80,250-seat Williams-Brice Stadium, there will be a challenge as the school had already sold 47,000 season tickets. In a radio interview Thursday evening with SportsTalkSC’s Phil Kornblut, Tanner said the department hasn’t yet gone in depth about working out the finer points of sorting that out.
“We haven’t gotten into that situation yet,” Tanner said. “We’re still working on the possibility of numbers. And I did throw out a number. It might not be accurate at the end of the day.
“We certainly haven’t made any decisions on how that happens. Is it going to be the, you know, from a booster standpoint, or your fans, your students, the band, faculty and staff? We haven’t engaged in that. We are prepared to move forward, but we haven’t done that yet. We’re just planning for a lot of different scenarios.”
He made the point that the start of football season is still four months away, so much could change between now and then. He did look at the plans the Miami Dolphins put out publicly, which involved letting 15,000 fans into a 65,000-seat stadium.
The groups competing for those seats range from big-money boosters to regular Gamecock Club members to students. Options that have been speculated about include a lottery and season ticket packages that split up games.
But for the moment, not much is settled. Asked directly when a plan might be out there, Tanner said it might not be for a bit.
“Well, I’m gonna speculate a little bit but I think that based on all the conversations that we’ve had at the different levels, you’re talking the beginning of our fall, whether it’s soccer, whether it’s football ... maybe by the middle of July we would be in a position to have a have a better stance,” Tanner told SportsTalk. “It might not be the final announcement but we would be closer to being able to maybe predict about what we’re going to do and if we can start on time.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 6:57 PM.
