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CLEMSON | Clemson's football players will board the buses on the west side of Death Valley, then take the famed ride over to the east side.
Then they will run down the hill and play football.
Those are about the only sights near and dear to Clemson fans' hearts that will look familiar this season, assuming a season is played.
This is a whole new world, one that will deliver an estimated $40 million hit to Clemson's athletics department coffers.
And that's with a capacity of 19,000 fans. If future circumstances dictate a reduction or an elimination of fan attendance at Memorial Stadium, the losses could reach $65 million.
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Those were some of the stark realities laid out by Dan Radakovich this morning when he met with the media to provide more details on how Clemson plans to stage football games this fall featuring the No. 1-ranked Tigers and all the superstars who would ordinarily pack the place and the town.
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The positive, of course, is that Clemson and the ACC are proceeding forward toward a season. And they seem genuinely optimistic that it can be pulled off, buttressed in part by the fact that COVID is virtually non-existent within the football program and the overall athletics program.
"Knock on wood, we're in a pretty good situation," Radakovich said, comparing Clemson to other places that have recently been struck by outbreaks of the virus.
Radakovich said approximately 5,000 donors who would have been eligible to purchase 23,000 tickets have chosen the "redshirt" option and will watch the season from home. The ticket office is in the process of allocating tickets to those who opted in, and Radakovich said everyone who made that decision will have the ability to purchase tickets to at least half of the home games, with priority based on level of giving.
"The allocation methodology mirrors what we've done in high-level postseason games the last few years," he said. "We wanted something familiar to our fans."
More on the unfamiliar: The traditional form of tailgating will be prohibited in an effort to keep the virus from spreading on campus. In-person classes are scheduled to resume Sept. 21.
"We need to protect the environment of campus," he said. "We have students who will be here once we have our first opening game. We want our students to be able to have a safe environment on campus. We don't want athletics to be the cause for any issues associated with potential closure of campus by having so many people out and about in a tailgating environment.
"Does that mean someone can't get there when we open the parking lots three hours before the game, get out with the people inside their car and have a chicken drumstick and a Coca-Cola? That's not going to be a problem. What we want to not have are large, mass gatherings of people that we would normally see on a beautiful fall afternoon here at Memorial Stadium. That's just not going to be able to happen in 2020."
After an initial outbreak of the virus among the football team in June, the football program and athletics in general have done an exemplary job according to recent numbers. Radakovich said the athletics department conducted 622 tests this week with zero positive cases. He said there hasn't been a positive test in the last couple weeks.
He said he hopes fans can follow that example as they come to campus and watch football while behaving in a prudent manner. And he included Clemson students, more than 2,000 of whom will be sitting in the South upper deck.
"Much like our student-athletes have learned over time, peer pressure is really good. They learned how to be safe in this environment. ... As you look at the general student population, the peer pressure piece is very important. And the role-modeling piece is very important. There are campuses that are experiencing some high outbreaks. But I would hope that much like we did within our athletic program, we were able to push through that and allow our student-athletes to continue to be here, go to summer school, train for the fall season."
Across the ACC, schools have agreed to no public sale of tickets to visiting fans. There will be a cap of 200 tickets for visiting teams, and that will be limited to families of players and staff.
As much outside focus as there is on the chances of football not being played this season, Radakovich did suggest that expanding the capacity of the stadium could happen if overall numbers allow for it.
"If things change for the worse or for the better, we have the ability to pivot there. There are continued advances in testing that could down the road have a positive spin on where we are right now, but this is where we are today. We've built our entire model on where we are today."
Radakovich said he can't answer for why the Big Ten and Pac-12 opted out of football this fall.
"I have friends in both conferences. Their medical experts have given the ADs and their presidents the medical advice that they've given, and they made the decision to halt their fall activities. The medical advice given by the medical group that was pulled together in April by the Atlantic Coast Conference has been a little different. ... We continue to feel that this is an environment where we can have safe competition with our student-athletes, as well as in some locations depending upon the circumstances in their states, have fans to watch them.
"This is a very different year, and this is probably one thing that highlights it the most: That some conferences have decided not to play, but the Big 12, the SEC and the ACC are continuing to move forward. ... We're looking to provide as safe an environment as we can for our student-athletes, and they are highly tested."
So they and we move on, toward a ritual that will look almost totally unfamiliar.
Except the part about the team hopping on the buses, riding around the stadium, running down the hill and playing the game of football.
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