Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Series Won't Happen Without Fans

There is another obstacle in order for West Virginia and Florida State to meet for their season opener in Atlanta at Mercedez Benz Stadium, fans must be in attendance for the Peach Bowl Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game Series.

“If there aren’t fans, then we aren’t able to do the games,” said Peach Bowl CEO and President Gary Stokan. “We just don’t have any revenue to pay the teams to come down to play (If there are no fans). So, they would either have to decide to come down to play and not make any money or they’d have to decide that they would want to go on campus either to West Virginia or to Florida State or in the case of the plus one, Virginia.”

The latter would be more likely to happen but as far as the plus one reference, that scenario was reported last week by multiple outlets after the decision by the Big Ten Conference to schedule conference-only games. Instead of playing a full schedule, conferences would allow one nonconference game to make room for traditional rivalries outside of conference play that officials wanted to keep on the schedule. And with that, Florida State would take their plus one and play in-state rival Florida, while Georgia, who is slated to play Virginia Labor Day night, would take their plus one with in-state rival Georgia Tech.

Stokan came up with a proposal for the representatives of the Big 12, SEC, and the ACC to accommodate the ever-changing landscape of college football during the pandemic.

“I think everybody’s interested, right now, in playing as many games as they can,” said Stokan. “So, what we did is put forth a scenario that promotes the fact that if the schools play a plus one or plus two, we can play our kickoff games.”

“In the case of plus one, we would be able to play two of the Kickoff games and we would lose Georgia and Florida State in Georgia Tech and Florida if there was conference plus one in the ACC/SEC. Therefore, West Virginia and Virginia together and still have our North Carolina and Auburn game the next week.”

“We’ve promoted that to the ACC, the SEC and the Big 12 offices and they said they’ll take it into consideration. Obviously, they’re going through probably 20 different scenarios… We just wanted to put it out there to make sure that they knew we were interested in continuing to play our Chick-Fil-A Kickoff games and here is what would happen if they played one and here is what would happen if they play two non-conference games,” added Stokan.

However, fans must be in attendance for there to be Chick-Fil-A Kickoff series. Currently, it’s hard to conceive the idea of full capacity stadiums this fall, and some NFL franchises have already announced their plans to be at 25% capacity for the 2020 season. Nonetheless, there hasn’t been a decision made across college football but currently can’t imagine that any program would allow more than a 50% capacity.

As far as the number of fans needed for the season opener against Florida State, that has yet to be determined.

“As long as there’s fans and there’s revenue. We have to have the revenue to pay the bills in Mercedes Benz Stadium. There are line items in the budget that we didn’t even conceive of, like masks. If we have to provide masks for everybody, that’s a cost that we didn’t realize we would have prior to COVID-19. So, first off, we have to get the conferences to decide how they want to play this schedule and if we have the chance to put the games on. Then, in parallel, we’re meeting with Mercedes Benz to go through the protocols and go through the budgets, and then once we have those done, we’ll know the capacities and how many tickets we can give to each team. We’ll get back with the team and negotiate what the paths will be, and we’ve had those discussions already with the AD’s of each of the six schools.”

“So, everybody is kind of waiting and building contingencies right now based on what the conference commissioners decide at the end of July,” added Stokan.

If there is a decision to allow fans inside Mercedes Benz Stadium, safety is of the utmost importance to everyone involved and Stokan laid out a few of the safety measures they’re looking into.

“Obviously, we're looking at protocols like everybody wearing masks. The good thing is all of our ticketing is mobile. Mercedes Benz (Stadium) is cashless – concessions and merchandise," said Stokan. "Whatever we do with our protocols, the most paramount priority that we have is to make sure that whoever steps into Mercedes Benz Stadium, it’s the safest atmosphere it can be. Whether that’s the team, staff, media, fans, whoever it is. So, we won’t do any pregame fan fest like we typically do. We won’t do our team walks. We won’t do any presentations on the field. We won’t have any bands or cheerleaders on the field. So, again, everything is built upon safety.”

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