Florida football announces new attendance policies for 2020 season

With the COVID-19 pandemic turning the college football world upside down, Florida football are still trying to make the best out of a grim situation.

On Thursday in Gainesville, the University of Florida announced how attending games in the Swamp will work this fall. This mandate is sure to make many fans upset, but it will maintain at least a semblance of the game day experience.

First and foremost, capacity will to be limited to 20 percent. This will shrink the number of fans from a typical sell-out crowd of over 88,000 down to just 17,000. While this new number does sound small, it is still a good number of fans. Luckily, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium’s massive size does allow almost 20,000 fans with social distancing implemented.

Unlike rival Florida State, the Gators will not be allowing any on-campus tailgating on game days. In addition to limited capacity, fans will be required to wear face coverings at all times. The only exception to this is if the fan is eating and/or drinking. While there will only be 17,000 fans in attendance, it may still be difficult to enforce this rule across the stadium.

Many beloved traditions will also be temporarily discontinued by this ruling, including the Gator Walk and Gator Walk Village. This may diminish the experience a bit, but things could be worse.

Perhaps one of the biggest entities affected by the mandate is the spirit team. There will not be cheerleader on the sideline this fall to rally the fans. There will also be no band, leaving The Swamp with a very empty feeling. To combat the awkwardly low noise levels sure to result from limited capacity, many schools have began to consider utilizing artificial noise.

While no college football fan is looking forward to seeing half-empty stadiums, it is simply something we will just have to deal with for the time being.

At the end of the day, most of us are getting to see our teams play, and that’s what really matters. If we work together, we could be seeing sold-out crowds across the stadium once again in the near future.