Ohio State bans tailgating at Buckeyes football games in 2020

The Ohio State Buckeyes aren’t playing around with COVID-19 gameday regulations

If there is to be a 2020 college football season, which already seems like a major coin flip, Ohio State will limit the capacity of the ‘Shoe to just 20 percent, at best.

Gene Smith had been optimistic about playing a full season, and not just limiting their interaction to conference games, as recently as a few months ago. However, the recent surge in cases nationwide and the unwillingness of some in the population to take the necessary precautions to curb COVID-19’s spread has put the 2020 season in doubt.

Ohio State AD Gene Smith will ban tailgating for the 2020 season at a minimum

“When you just watch the behavior, and you watch the fact that we’re spiking, and you watch our governor’s fighting to help us help ourselves, we’re not in a good place. So I would have a hard time doing something different than the CDC guidelines if we’re able to have fans in the stands,” Smith said.

Ohio Stadium’s capacity is just short of 105,000, so a 20 percent clip is near 21,000. The idea of such a gathering, especially at this point in our fight against the pandemic, seems farfetched to say the least. We’ll just call Smith an optimist, but even he understands tailgating cannot happen.

“Based upon where we are, I think we’re going to end up with the CDC requirements of 6 feet,” Smith continued. “So that takes our stadium capacity down significantly, and we’ll begin to work on that. That hasn’t been a priority at this point in time, but we’ll get to that and take the advice of our medical people.”

No one in the college football landscape wants to cancel the season, but it’s vital that Ohio State, the Big Ten and the sport as a whole not put amateur athletes at risk for financial benefit.

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