I don’t know how they’re gonna do it, but they’re gonna do it, evidently.
It looks as if Georgia fans are going to get to tailgate before home football games after all. But there will be a catch.
Pending final approval, the plan is that tailgating on the UGA campus will be limited to those people holding tickets for the games, people familiar with planning discussions told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the capacity of Sanford Stadium is being reduced for social-distancing purposes to 20 to 25% – or no more than about 23,000 spectators. Reserved campus parking will be available to all ticket-holders. Fans will have to present their bar-coded tickets for digital scan to be admitted to designated parking areas.
Once parked, spectators will be free to tailgate in those designated areas. However, there will be limitations beyond that:
- Non-ticketed guests will not be permitted.
- Social-distancing guidelines regarding crowd sizes must be observed
- There will be time limits. UGA’s parking lots, open at 7 a.m. on normal gameday Saturdays, won’t be opened until a few hours before kickoff.
As always, the devil’s in the details, but “non-ticketed guests will not be permitted” is gonna be a complete bitch to enforce. I also can’t wait to see how hapless staff attempting to enforce social distancing guidelines are treated by fans who, for whatever reason, don’t care about them. At least it’s outdoors.
Towers goes on to note that if this policy is formalized, Georgia will definitely be an outlier in the conference. Sure hope Butts-Mehre knows what it’s doing here.
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UPDATE:
“If you have an outdoor stadium and fans wear face coverings and are six feet apart and are careful about common areas and restrooms, the risk could be mitigated significantly,” says Sankar Swaminathan, chief of the infectious diseases department at the Utah School of Medicine and a member of the Pac-12’s COVID-19 advisory panel. “I think given the right circumstances, that would be managed, but it would require a great deal of discipline and enforcement.”
Yeah, good luck with that, y’all.
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Execution will be difficult. It will be interesting to see how early the lots are open. It could help avoid the surge of traffic into the stadium occurring at the same time. Also, if the lots are open only for a short time before the game it could serve as a disincentive for people to set up their tent, grill, corn hole, etc…. It would be more effective if they were clear on if tailgating could continue after kickoff or resume after the game.
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Michael Adams is somewhere smiling.
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I imagine UGA PD and A-CC PD can handle 23,000 people. If I were on the A-CC commission, I’d try to find a way to monetize citations for failure to comply.
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I’m sorry… you’re suggesting using A-CC police to enforce school regulations and have the county fine people for not following them?
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I don’t even think the UGA PD can issue a citation for it. This is virtually unenforceable. Are they going to check every student at a tailgate to determine if he/she has a student ticket for the game? Are they going to have checkpoints at every entrance to campus (which are public streets) to make sure people have tickets before they can turn right off Broad onto Lumpkin? Does the university have enough barriers to block off every non-AA controlled parking lot on campus?
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A-CC can’t do anything without a city/county ordinance. Do you think the downtown businesses that are already struggling to stay afloat are going to go along with additional game day restrictions? If they do, you might as well shutter every downtown business and let every franchise on earth come in.
This rule is for on campus only where the university can do whatever they want.
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Exactly
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Sieg heil!
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Not funny, Chuck.
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Except the ACC Politburo has no jurisdiction over on-campus lots, which is what this article pertains to… I would imagine with who the tickets are going to, almost everyone will already have an on-campus parking pass, leaving little need for private lots or off-campus parking….
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Clarke County’s COVID graph looks like a rocketship right now – pure exponetual growth. I’m sure bringing in tens of thousands of people (who by definition aren’t that COVID concerned) and putting them together won’t cause issues.
Again at least it’s outside. But this isn’t great.
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Fake news /s
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Are the attendees going to commiserate with the locals? On an ordinary Saturday when there are 100,000 additional people in the city, then of course they will. With 23,000 fans, though, it isn’t necessary. Most will be with their families who they are already exposed to. I don’t see how COVID spreading on campus or in the local community will have any impact on those in attendance, except those who take unnecessary risks. If the people who assume greater risks get sick, so be it. As long as you take your own precautions and stay away from those people, you will be fine.
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Cases…all be dead in two weeks, no wait, they have been back on campus longer than that, what in the hell is going on?
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It’s the back to school spike in cases. The numbers temporarily go up, and then they go back down. It happened in Carroll and Lumpkin and Baldwin counties. Now it is happening in Clarke county. The good news is that hospitalizations and deaths aren’t spiking in those counties. Just positive test numbers.
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I wonder how Weyman C. Wannamaker, a great American, would handle this football season?
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As my name implies, it would be Dorsey Hill, world’s biggest Bulldog fan.
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Downtown is going to be packed out.
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Which would be great.
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This is absurd. They expect me to buy a ticket for my chef, butler, band and servers at my tailgate? Unconsciousable!
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OK, to the lawyers here I ask: Is the University of Georgia’s campus not public land? If I choose to walk onto the campus anytime, day or night, I’m legally within my rights to do so. How are they going to tell me that I can’t stand on a patch of grass where there’s a tailgate going on?
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Just because it is “public land” does not mean you have an unlimited right to use or access it. The government can establish reasonable rules for the use of government property – many public parks are “closed” after sundown, and you can be arrested for trespassing if you are on that public land during non-daylight hours. Similarly, the University could likely exclude all non-students, faculty and staff from campus, or could establish “curfews” on campus after a certain hour. The limitation on this is that enforcement of those reasonable rules cannot be arbitrary or capricious.
Given the circumstances, I don’t think the University would have a difficult time convincing a judge that people who aren’t going to the game but who are congregating on university property in large groups pose a risk to public health….
Disclaimer: Legal advice you receive on the internet is worth what you pay for it…
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I tried that argument for all my student parking tickets. Didn’t work.
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Looks like over 10% of the students are already Covid positive. May as well move on to the alumni.
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I think the dead bodies littered about campus will deter most tailgates. Not to worry.
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I’m just ready for the games to start. All this worry and rule-making about people who have enough info and sense to make their own choices is tiring.
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I read this line “Fans will have to present their bar-coded tickets for digital scan to be admitted to designated parking areas.” and my immediate thought was – The scan will probably register the ticket as ‘used’ and not allow me entry into the game. If it can SNAFU, it will SNAFU.
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