A&M, UT plan on full houses in the fall
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M and Texas are pushing forward with the idea of playing before more than 100,000 fans at Kyle Field and Royal-memorial Stadium starting in September, but how realistic are their hopes?
A&M athletic director Ross Bjork this week referenced a preliminary report via the website medrxiv (pronounced med archive) examining counties across the country that hosted either limited-capacity NFL or college football games in the fall and winter.
According to the manuscript’s five authors representing Massachusetts General Hospital, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Boston Medical School and Boston University: “Our study does not find an increase in county-level COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents due to NFL and NCAA football games held with limited in-person attendance.”
The upbeat study must still undergo peer review. Bjork recognizes the difference between limited- and full-capacity games but is optimistic multiple COVID-19 vaccines will help create a return to normalcy — with a big chunk of normalcy around A&M being more than 100,000 fans in attendance when the Aggies host Kent State on Sept. 4 at Kyle Field.
“There may be protocols. We may be wearing face coverings. We don’t know all those answers yet,” Bjork said during an “Aggie Town Hall” via A&M athletics. “But that’s the plan as we sit here today: a full stadium, full-season ticket allotment (with) the 12th Man student section full. People (by then) are going to be vaccinated at a
really, really high level.
“Those are all the projections … the whole herd immunity, all those things. We should just be in a much better place.”
Bjork urged continued diligence and for fans and everyone else to keep wearing masks and staying at safe distances from others as the population receives the vaccinations into the spring and summer.
“If we have to pivot, we know we can,” Bjork said of playing another football season in front of limited-capacity crowds if necessary. “As we’ve said, the virus will dictate.”
Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte this week joined the chorus calling for full stadiums in the last third of 2021. Longhorns fan Ryan Sheiner asked Del Conte via Twitter: “Assuming the majority of the country is vaccinated by the end of the summer, are we planning on having 100 percent capacity for
football in the fall?”
Del Conte responded, “That’s our plan.”
Texas had revealed its intentions a few weeks prior in a fact sheet directed at potential season ticket holders, adding a caveat based on the direction of the virus.
The update reads in part: “Texas Athletics is currently planning for attendance at 2021 home games to be at 100 percent seating capacity. We will continue to monitor local COVID-19 health and safety conditions in coordination with the NCAA, Big 12, University, state and local medical partners.”
Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott mandated that outdoor stadiums in the state not exceed 50 percent capacity in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and A&M and Texas both kept their capacities at about 25 percent throughout the fall.
With nearly 1.6 million of the state’s 29 million residents now fully vaccinated and with COVID-19 numbers declining this winter, Abbott said Thursday
during a press conference in Corpus Christi that he was “working right now on evaluating when we’re going to be able to remove all statewide orders.”
That, of course, would directly impact the crowd plans of A&M and Texas. Based on the cavernous capacity of Kyle Field (Bjork said it can hold up to 110,000 fans), A&M last season led the nation in average attendance at nearly 25,000 per game. The Aggies held four of the five top spots nationally in single-game attendance in 2020, with Texas-oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl checking in at No. 4 at 24,000.
“When all those teams were complaining about the fans, we were only a quarter full,” A&M coach Jimbo Fisher said of gripes from some opponents, particularly Florida, that A&M appeared to have more than 25,000 fans on hand last fall. “I can’t wait until we fill that thing up next year and make it really miserable on the guys coming in here.”
A&M and Texas also are planning on fans attending their spring games, albeit at limited capacity, usually the case for spring games anyway. The Aggies are scheduled to play each other on April 17 at Kyle Field, and the Longhorns follow a week later at Royal-memorial Stadium.
The state’s flagship programs have plenty of reason for excitement springing into what they hope is a return to normalcy. The Aggies finished last season No. 4 nationally under Fisher, their highest final ranking in the Associated Press poll since winning the national title in 1939, and return nine starters on defense.
The Longhorns fired Tom Herman in the offseason and hired Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, a former head coach at Washington and Southern California. The Sarkisian era in Austin is scheduled to start Sept. 4 at home against Louisiana-lafayette.