Fans Will Fill Seats If Michigan Stadium, College Venues Allow Them In

Quite a few years back, I visited a friend in Seward, Alaska, and when I woke on the first morning and threw back the blackout curtains, there stood a glorious mountain peak. Every day, I stared out that window absorbing its majestic beauty.

At the same time, my friend would pass by the window with hardly a glance. He had lived in Alaska for six months and by the time of my trip, the mountains had become such a regular part of his life, he barely noticed them anymore.

I thought back on this after hearing Jim Harbaugh earlier this week make the most obvious statement that he’d rather play college football this fall in empty stadiums than not have college football at all.

As we navigate our COVID-19 world, and the very real possibility that sports will return in the coming weeks and months to empty stadiums, I wonder if we will all just get used to it – fans watching on TV, players, coaches and officials competing while surrounded by emptiness.

But the truth is, I don’t think it will look quite like that. Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick has already floated the idea of allowing 20,000 fans to attend home games in South Bend, with some sort of lottery system to determine who can purchase tickets.

With stay-at-home orders being lifted across the country, we’ve seen hundreds of beachgoers flock to the Florida shores. We’ve seen busy Manhattan street corners. We’ve seen packed bars and restaurants in Ohio. We’ve seen Iowans attend movie theaters. Americans won’t be denied their freedom to assemble, whether it’s the safe thing to do or not.

And if universities and professional franchises announce that they will allow fans to attend, most likely at a 20-30% clip of maximum occupancy, the people will come. They will sit together with friends and family. They might sit far apart from strangers, or they might not, depending on what the host venues dictate.

So while we all contemplate what our games will look like without fans, what we’re actually likely facing are sparsely-crowded stadiums, 20-30,000 fans spaced out, though it will look very different from a typical fall Saturday at The Big House.

If you’ve ever traveled a few miles down the road to neighbor Eastern Michigan, or watched a Mid-American Conference game at Ford Field, you should know what to expect. It’s not the best atmosphere. There’s no home-field crowd advantage, but there are butts in seats, wearing school colors, singing fight songs and high-fiving after touchdowns.

We can probably expect to see that come fall. Well, except for the high-fiving part.