There will be school football on Saturday night.
More than five months after the coronavirus pandemic ended all sports, and even though several primary meetings have selected not to compete this season while others seek to handle positive case outbreaks, the 2020 school football season will begin roughly as planned with a game between two groups in the championship subdivision.
The Arkansas Center and Austin Peay (9 p.m. ET, ESPN) were scheduled to complete a series of homes and homes in Conway, Arkansas, before the pandemic led both groups to move the assembly to the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama.
Non-family names, schools are among the most productive FCS programs. Both groups made the playoffs last season, with central Arkansas entering the circular moment and Austin Peay reaching the quarter-finals by winning 11 games, the highest in the school, with coach Mark Hudspeth, who resigned in July, bringing up the desire to spend more time with his team. family. Array was replaced on an interim post through associate head coach Marquase Lovings.
As the only opening weekend game, known as Week Zero, and broadcast in prime time on ESPN, the game is expected to attract a hunger for football content.
“It’s different,” said Brad Teague, central Arkansas’ director of sports. “And because we’re Saturday’s only game and the first game of the school football season, the first NCAA contest since COVID closed it in the spring, there’s a lot more excitement.”
The possibility of playing ESPN “is exciting for those guys,” Teague said. “They are very motivated and very excited. For our brand, our national popularity and our advertising, we are very excited about this. We know it’s going to be very for us.”
The seasonal opener offers a review of how groups will handle programming logistics, making plans and games while handling the fitness and protection issues that still pose COVID-19.
Bowl Subdivision systems have also been forced to reschedule individual games and even create completely new schedules when express meetings and groups leave the competition. The Power Five leagues that remained on track to start the season in September added convention games to the normal season schedule.
Both groups will move into the game on Friday and spend the evening in a hotel. Austin Peay will be on 4 buses, one more than usual, with each bus at partial capacity and with a user parked according to the row. Everyone in the Central Arkansas motorcade will wear an N95 mask on the bus, Teague said.
Central Arkansas verification protocols began by giving students-athletes an entry check, an initial check for the coronavirus, upon returning to campus. The athletics branch has been reviewing athletes once a week since early August. Three hundred checks have been administered in the last two weeks and only one positive result, Teague said, with the missing checkup run on Wednesday.
In addition, central Arkansas is asking bus drivers to transport the equipment to be edited by COVID-19 and negative.
Austin Peay experienced an outbreak of 11 positive cases in June, leading the university to close all sports for 3 weeks and re-evaluate existing protocols and procedures.
Several systems that discussed travel logistics with USA TODAY Sports stated that the length of the list would not yet replace the total length of the overall travel organization would be minimized by eliminating unnecessary porters, equipment, and personnel.
Small teams in central Arkansas and Austin Peay will adhere to the same distance protocols used on campus or internal football facilities, restricting the amount of interactions players, coaches and staff will have outdoors in hotel rooms.
“It will be a little different because, under general circumstances, the circle of family and friends can stay in the hotel lobby and spend time with the team’s players,” said Austin Peay sports director Gerald Harrison. “But that doesn’t happen now.”
The Cramton Bowl will restrict attendance to a quarter of its 25,000-seat capacity, reflecting the references used in the Power Five. Each SEC school that has announced attendance plans will allow a capacity of approximately 25% while adding measures that require covering your face and prohibiting scorcing while switching only to cell ticketing.
The Arkansas Center and Austin Peay won 400 tickets for families and guests of the athletes, Harrison said, while the rest of the tickets were sold online.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a sale.
“We also sense the control that will accompany us through the game, while many others are not and this is the first game, while many have gone backwards in September. We sensed that,” Teague said. “We are in a position to deal with these issues and communicate our security protocols that have been in place since June.”