As The Clemson Insider reported in our Insider Report Monday, Clemson is planning to allow fans into Memorial Stadium this coming season. However, as TCI learned on Wednesday, there is a process it must go through in order to have fans attend a football game given the current situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources have told TCI, Clemson could be approved by South Carolina’s Department of Commerce and Gov. Henry McMaster soon and could be announcing its plans by the end of the week. One source told us they do not expect any problems with the state or the Governor approving the plan. The University of South Carolina is having to go through the same process.
“Basically, the Governor has his guidelines which sets limits on how many people can be gathered at one event,” a source said. “But there is a process Clemson and South Carolina are going through to get an exception to the rule.”
From what we have heard, Clemson is looking at a plan that will allow around 23 percent of Death Valley’s capacity. Memorial Stadium officially holds 81,500 fans. At 23 percent, this year’s number would come to about 16,000 fans.
The news coming out of Clemson lines up to what some of the schools in the ACC and SEC have already announced. Georgia Tech announced on Wednesday it will host a 20 percent capacity at Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta, while Georgia announced it will hold somewhere between 20 and 25 percent at Sanford Stadium in Athens.
Texas A&M announced it will have 25 percent, while Auburn and Alabama will both have 20 percent.
Keep in mind, nothing at Clemson or South Carolina has been formerly approved until the state of South Carolina signs off on it first. The process was supposed to be approved last week, but it got put on hold due to the news of the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponing their fall seasons until the spring.
But with the ACC, SEC and Big 12 announcing they are pushing forward towards a 2020 season in the fall, the process started back up.
As for tailgating, it sounds as if Clemson will allow tailgating for those that have parking passes for the particular game. We were told Clemson is going to monitor tailgates and make sure there are not big groups of people like you normally see on Saturday afternoons in the fall in Clemson.
“If they see five or ten around the tailgate that will be acceptable, but if they see ten to twenty, then they will probably go and break those crowds up,” one source said.
As you know, this past Monday the Clemson ticket office sent out an email to season-ticket holders and asked which fans already know they will not attend any home games this year. The point of the email was to get an idea of how many tickets they can allocate to other fans.
They want to make sure the tickets they supply are given to those fans who know they can attend the games.
Earlier on Wednesday, Clemson officially announced the Tigers will host The Citadel on Sept. 19 as its one non-conference game the ACC is allowing its member institutions to play within its own state borders. The two teams were originally scheduled to meet on Nov. 14 in Clemson.
Both Clemson and The Citadel will adhere to competition testing protocols set forth by the ACC Medical Advisory Group. Clemson also has home games scheduled for Oct. 3 (Virginia), Oct. 10 (Miami), Oct. 24 (Syracuse), Oct. 31 (Boston College) and Nov. 28 (Pitt).
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