Under circumstances, a primary convention football program with a new head coach will welcome enthusiasts at its season opening.
That wasn’t the case Saturday for the Arkansas Razorbacks, who were betting their first game with Sam Pittman.
One message, posted at Fayetteville Stadium, Arkansas, was: “Thank you for NOT attending today’s game. “
This signage was intended for enthusiasts who had symptoms of COVID-19 or were at risk, ingesting them to stay away this time. In Columbia, Missouri, similar symptoms did not require any meeting.
The messages were a concession to the pandemic that closed the country and the sports world, delaying the start-up of the 2020 football season. The SEC complex with a cautious plan to start its season last September while the big ten and Pac-12 canceled their seasons and then reconsidered.
That plan came to fruition with the first week of play in a normal 10-game season reserved for the conference, which saw stadiums limited to 25% less capacity under security protocols. Fans, for the most part, wearing masks and stayed away. – There were gaps. The gangs played from the stands instead of walking around the country. Crowd noise was transmitted by speakers to decorate the atmosphere created through those spaced fans. Outside the stadiums, the tailgating was not on the menu.
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On the field, the sporting side was a combination of the familiar: Alabama strangled Missouri and Florida to ruin Lane Kiffin’s debut in Ole Miss, and the unexpected, with Mississippi State knocking out the LSU national champion in Mike Leach’s first game as coach.
Here are, as USA TODAY Sports Network newscasts have observed, snapshots of a start in the SEC game:
In an overall year, Ole Miss football takes a backseat on game day. The heeling atmosphere at The Grove is the biggest draw for fans.
This can’t be the case this year. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has banned vehicle traffic on campus by executive order. So, with the exception of a few runners hanging out in the empty, carpless, chandelier-free ghost of grove town, the SEC’s best-known wheel sucking environment was not a major factor for the first time in years.
As for the game itself, the few enthusiasts discovered a way to generate energy. The stands were flooded with powdered blue, the color of the new Rebels T-shirts. Even with a limited number of enthusiasts, the avalanche of colors to combine well and produce its effect.
The strangest atmospheric facet of the game?The audience faced the announcer had to use pauses in the action to remind enthusiasts to wear their masks.
Five buses transported the Arkansas football team to Donald W Stadium: Reynolds Razorbacks and Gregory Love in their pig’s head hat, foam finger and Razorback mask to cheer on the passing team.
The pandemic could not stop him and some 17,000 Razorback enthusiasts out of the game in the season opener against Georgia, number three.
“I’ll go anyway, ” said Love, 42, from Benton, Ark. “I love my Hogs and football is a treatment for my disability. “
Love, who said she had neurological deficits and birth defects, went down when it looked like the season wouldn’t come.
“I started crying when they said we weren’t going to play,” Love said. “When they said yes, I got excited.
At Theburn, it was hard to get rid of the feeling that something was missing, look at Jordan-Hare Stadium to reflect a general atmosphere from day to day. The crowd has made their classic song “Waaaaaaar Eagle” before the start, but a video of last year’s Iron Bowl Eagle Flight instead of the genuine: SEC rules prohibit pets from live animals.
The approximately 12,000 scholars were very noisy, however, instead of being one aspect to another at a party in the south, they were scattered all over the place.
A guy in the bleachers at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge had his mask down and a sheriff came up to him: “Sir, please put on the mask completely. “
At the end of the disappointed loss of LSU, the only noise in a grave-like death valley, a handful of Mississippi state enthusiasts in southern whoother cough rule. The rest of the 21,124 had disappeared.
“The other people who came here were noisy and participated in the game for a while,” said JaCoby Stevens, senior security at LSU.
Ninety minutes before the start, it just didn’t look like a game day. The domain near the stadium has a bumper-to-bumper traffic. That day was like taking the kids to see Mike the Tiger in his cage on a Saturday in June. .
After the last whistle, it’s even quieter.
Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, South Carolina is located in the middle of an elementary fair. The acres of parking area were a full quarterback two hours before the Gamecocks game against Tennessee began.
Nowhere can you see festive and overflowing buffets and refrigerators filled under giant awnings with flat-screen TVs. Tents, TVs and giant screens have been banned in maximum lots.
“It was a strange feeling to drive,” said Marian Lindsey, who traveled Beaufort’s 140 miles with her husband, Rick.
At the front of a parking lot, an assistant exclaimed to his colleague, “Dude, it’s easy. We’ll get out of here soon. On a single-storey front just a block away, another masked assistant was sitting on a stool, sleeping.
Inside the stadium, “Sandstorm” rang and the white towels rippled, much less than usual. A socially remote crowd of 15,009 saw Tennessee beat South Carolina 31-27.
Despite the reduced capacity, Flight’s supporter, Henry To’o To’o, applauded Gamecocks enthusiasts for creating a colorful atmosphere.
“They were noisy, ” he said. It might have seemed empty, but noisy, and they bring them energy.
The non-secular squadron cheered from the stands. Although the band took to the field, scenes from the band from past seasons were played on the video panel while playing from the stands.
Vanderbilt’s gaming environment at 11th Texas A
About two-thirds of Kyle Field’s stands looked like a football game or a pandemic. Fans were spaced, with several empty seats between small groups.
But the so-called twelfth, that is, the scholars and cadets of Texas A
Texas A
And if anyone forgets the circumstances, they call them to go back to the toilets. Signs on the washbasins instructed consumers to wash their hands for 20 seconds: “How long it takes to sing the beginning of Aggie’s war anthem!”
Eric Boynton, Glenn Guilbeau, Adam Sparks, Nick Suss, Blake Toppmeyer, Josh Vitale and Marc Weiszer contributed to this report.