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Adam Haukap, Arkansas State’s senior associate athletic director, has led planning for what game days will look like this fall at Centennial Bank Stadium in Jonesboro heading into ASU’s home opener against Central Arkansas on Saturday.

Adam Haukap has been preparing for Saturday since May.

The Arkansas State University senior associate athletic director has led the charge for ASU in planning what game days will look like this fall at Centennial Bank Stadium. And when Arkansas State plays the University of Central Arkansas on Saturday at 2:30 p.m., his plan finally will come to fruition.

“We thought through this all summer long. It was really such a strange process because one week you thought maybe we were playing, another week you thought we might not be playing anymore,” said Haukap, who is also the executive director of the Red Wolves Foundation. “It’s like so many of the things we’ve done during the pandemic — the first time we got a haircut, the first time to go to a restaurant, the first time to go to Target, the first time to go to the grocery store, whatever — it’s going to be a little bit of a feeling-out process on Saturday with UCA.”

Having to postpone its first two home games of the season, Arkansas State is one of the few schools playing this fall that has yet to play at home. And while most schools have limited capacity at football games somewhere between 10% and 30%, ASU will allow about 40%, or 12,000 seats of its 30,406 available.

Arkansas State will have the largest number of fans allowed and percentage capacity at home games this season in the Sun Belt among schools that disclose such figures. Georgia State and Troy have not disclosed the exact number of fans they are allowing.

“Everybody was going around saying, ‘ We’ll do 25%.’ We didn’t look at it that way,” Haukap said. “What we’re trying to do though is not just say arbitrarily we’ve got X number of people or X percentage and then these four get to stay, but these two, three people they’ve got to move.

“We knew right away that 50% was impossible. If you’re going every other row in the stadium, you’re losing 50%. We think most social bubbles will be between 6-8 people, honestly. That was kind of our estimate based on what we know about our season-ticket holders.”

Arkansas State’s plan, which was approved by the Arkansas Department of Health, is to block off every other row, leave three seats between each grouping of people and allow up to 12 people in one “social bubble.” Haukap defined a social bubble as family members, friends or anyone a fan feels comfortable sitting by.

Fans will call 48 hours before the game to reserve their seats, and they will be seated as close to their normal season tickets as possible. All fans will be required to where a mask, and no tailgating will be permitted.

The band will be distanced in the three sections in the stadium’s upper east section. And students will be allotted three sections in the bottom east section with up to 1,000 seats. They will be in groups of 4-6.

“I’m not sure that we’ll get 12,000, but that’s kind of the estimate that we’ve got based on the number of tickets that we’ve got sold,” Haukap said. “Whether we get close to 12,000 or not, that’s what we were approved for through the [Arkansas Department of Health] plan.”

A benefit of Arkansas State’s 12,000-seat plan is the ability to hold onto its season-ticket holders, which is where a good amount of revenue is generated.

ASU will take a hit financially this year, but how big is currently unknown. But the opportunity to host its season-ticket holders at football game this fall is a game-changer for a Group of Five program.

“It’s how we pay our bills,” ASU Athletic Director Terry Mohajir said. “Being able to accommodate all your seasonticket holders is huge because that’s the lifeline of your program. Any program in America, your lifeline is your season-ticket holders and your donors. Period.

“We could not operate this athletic department on state-allocated funds. We just can’t do it.”

Haukap and Mohajir believe they and their staff have thought through every possible outcome of Saturday’s plan.

So what exactly is their biggest fear as they hope to welcome 12,000 fans into Centennial Bank Stadium?

“It’s just the unknown, right?” Haukap said. “I think what we’ve tried to do is think through it. We’ve tried to think through contingencies, we’ve tried to think thorough what-ifs. It’s that concern that we’re doing things in a little bit tighter of a window.

“As the season progresses, we’ll refine it and get into a groove, and people will feel more comfortable.”