South Alabama vs Southern Miss Scheduled For National Broadcast
The South Alabama Jaguar football team will open the 2020 college football season with a nationally-televised match up against the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles per Conference USA.
The Jags and the Golden Eagles will kick off at 8pm CDT on Thursday, September 3 at M. M. Roberts Stadium in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The game will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network.
It will be the first time the Jags have been on CBSSN since their November 13, 2013 game at Navy.
As all South Alabama football games they can also be heard on 96.1 FM The Rocket and 99.5 FM The Jag locally in Mobile. As well as nation wide on the iHeartRadio app.
We will be there to give you in-game updates on twitter at @USAThunderjags.
Season Tickets In The Time Of Covid
Getting actual season ticket sales numbers is hard.
The only time you really get any sense of numbers is when a school sells out of season tickets. Your Power Five major programs typically have waiting lists for season tickets.
However, when you get down to the Group of Five, they don’t typically have sell outs of season tickets.
Old Dominion had a great run that ended in 2018. For nine seasons they sold out their season tickets and had sell out games at S.B. Ballard Stadium. A streak of 60 sell outs for a mid major is quite the accomplishment even for a 20,118 seat stadium.
The 2020 season was supposed to be something huge for South Alabama football.
After 11 seasons of playing their home games at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, roughly a seven mile drive from campus, the Jaguars were poised to open their brand new, $74 million on-campus stadium.
When it was announced, Jaguar fans were elated to finally get on campus. Many had gripped against the lack luster condition of Lad-Peebles Stadium, a 72 year old facility.
But after a poor season on the field, 2-10 with only one win against an FBS opponent, did that dampen the spirits of even some of the most die hard fans? That was the second seasons under head coach Steve Campbell’s leadership and a total record of 5-19 over that time period. Two of those wins against FCS opponents by the way.
Recently Director of Athletics Joel Erdmann and other staff hosted a meeting with season ticket holders via Zoom. In that meeting it was mentioned that with social distancing measures in place at Hancock Whitney Stadium, the capacity would be limited to 6,200. But that number would be able to accommodate all of the season ticket holders.
That got my attention.
Later in the meeting, it was mentioned that they had only sold 4,439 season tickets. Granted, they stopped selling season ticket midway through March when social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders were put in place in the state of Alabama.
But with the push after the 2019 season ended and the 2020 season being the first on-campus, and season ticket renewals having already been emailed and mailed out, one would think that more than 4,439 season tickets would have been sold.
As of the Zoom meeting, 10% or less of the season ticket holders had decided to opt-out of the 2020 season and either roll their payments over to the 2021 season tickets or gift the money to the University.
It’s unknown how many student tickets would have been kept in reserve and not sold. But it seems that, without the pandemic striking, student were going to have plenty of opportunities to take in a game.
Attempts to get season ticket sales numbers from peer Group of Five schools in the area were unsuccessful.
UAB, a peer school in a G5 conference within the state of Alabama, was one of those schools that did not respond. The 2020 season will be their last at the ageing Legion Field before they move into the currently under construction Protective Stadium. The $179 million, 45,000 seat multi-use stadium that will be operated by the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center. While it is not an on-campus stadium (those plans were nixed by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees) it will be in closer proximity to the University in downtown Birmingham.
While South Alabama is a year ahead of occupying their stadium, USA ticket sales prioritized season ticket holders who purchased tickets for 2019 when it was time to get 2020 season tickets.
It was last summer when the 2020 season ticket holders went through the process of choosing their seat locations in ‘The Cock’ as well.
Am I completely off on the season ticket numbers here?
Is 4,439 a respectable number?
Is my expectations for season ticket sales too high for a mid major G5 school with a brand new $74 million on-campus stadium?
Or does this have more to say about the current state of the program rather than the current state of the playing venue? Did Covid hamper what would have been their big season ticket sales months?
I think Covid or not, if the 2020 season is played in the fall, it will be a make or break season for Coach Campbell. Another two or three win season and more apathy in the fans may force Erdmann’s hand.
Reports Swirling Big Ten To Cancel Football Season
After the reports yesterday that the Big Ten had enough votes internally to postpone the fall sports season to the spring, we all knew Monday would be a very interesting day.
Dan Patrick reported early Monday morning that the Big Ten had voted internally 12-2 to postpone the season. The two votes for a fall season were Nebraska and Iowa.
Now the Detroit Daily News is reporting that the Big Ten will announce on Tuesday that the conference has officially decided to postpone fall sports until the spring of 2021.
Meanwhile the SEC is reportedly recruiting ACC and Big 12 teams to play this fall. Both the ACC and Big 12 seem to be on the fence as to playing football this fall. Even the Big 12 may be cozying up to Nebraska, who left the conference to join the Big Ten in 2010.
Big Twelve to Nebraska: Come on home Nebraska. Let’s find a partner, make it a dozen and renew one of college football’s great rivalries! pic.twitter.com/uCfwOLQ8LE— Spencer Tillman (@SpenceTillman) August 10, 2020
All the while the Sun Belt Conference and Conference USA are still practicing and moving forward towards a 2020 fall season. It’s being rumored that some early games are moving up to week zero (August 29th). Troy and Middle Tennessee may be renewing their rivalry this year, and they may make it home-and-home in one season!
When you thought 2020 could not get any more crazy! This scheduling and will they/won’t they discussion is bringing out some borderline unimaginable stuff!
The Fate Of Fall Sports Likely To Be Determined In The Next 72 Hours
The next 72 hours will determine if we have college football this fall, or any fall sports for that matter..
On Saturday, the Mid American Conference announced that they were postponing their fall sports until the spring, which includes football.
The MAC, considered a Group of 5 conference, is starting to look like the first domino to fall among the FBS conferences.
The Big Ten presidents met on Saturday and, while they did not vote to postpone the season, they did vote that football practices should remain in the “acclimatization phase” until further notice, which means helmets only and without contact.
Apparently commissioners of the Power 5 conferences held an emergency meeting as concerns continue to grow among college football athletics officials that the upcoming football season, and other fall sports, will not be able to be played due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It appears that, even though the Big Ten presidents did not vote to postpone the season, they are ready to pull the plug on the fall season and wanted to gauge whether the other commissioners and university presidents would join them.
The Big Ten presidents could meet as soon as Sunday Night with the feedback from the other Power Five commissioners and could be the first to vote to postpone fall sports season to the spring among the Power Five.
The PAC-12 is set to meet again on Tuesday.
Basically no one wants to be the first, nor the last.
However if all of the power five conferences vote to postpone fall sports, including football, to the spring they will need to have some sort of plan ready to announce to the fans and student-athletes. They will not want to hear “we’ll get back to you on that.”
I fall into the camp that having a football season is probably one of the best things for the student-athletes. They will be on campus with excellent medical care and rigorous testing. Probably the biggest threat would be college parties and girls. Because, lets face it, some college kids are going to have some parties and athletes will be invited.
Jags vs Southern Miss Date Change; Tulane Replaces Grambling For Home Opener
South Alabama Athletics announced two scheduling changes on Thursday.
The season opener against Southern Miss has moved up to Thursday, September 3. It was originally scheduled for Saturday, September 5th.
In an effort to replace the Jags home opener against Grambling, which was cancelled when the SWAC announced the postponement of the football season to the spring, has scheduled Tulane to visit Mobile.
USA was trying to schedule an FCS school to replace FCS Grambling but was unable to find anyone to fill that hole in the schedule. Apparently they did not want to take the chance of forever having a home opening loss in Hancock Whitney Stadium to go down as a loss to in-state foe (can’t really call them a rival…yet) UAB.
As for attendance for the season opener at Southern Miss, or attendance at home this season, there has not been an official announcement. So far it is presumed that home game attendance will be limited to 25% if fans are permitted to attend games at all, at least in the early part of the season.
Take a look at our previous article about attendance numbers and why USA should consider playing their home games at Ladd-Peebles this season due to the reduced attendance numbers because of the pandemic.
Check back for updates as they come.
Go Jags!
SEC Decision Cancels South Alabama’s Game Versus Florida
Another blow to the Jaguars schedule happened today, courtesy of the Southeastern Conference.
The SEC announced they were going to a 10-game, conference-only schedule for fall of 2020. Due to this decision, the Jags game in The Swamp against Florida will happen this fall.
This had been rumored for the last several days and pretty much was inevitable when the Atlantic Coast Conference announced an 11 game season, 10 conference games and one non-conference game.
Additionally, the SEC football season will start on September 26 and the SEC Championship Game will move to December 19.
As it currently stands, the Jags will open against Southern Mississippi on September 5, then would return to action on September 26 against UAB.
However, as we are seeing nation wide this is a fuild situation and Sun Belt Conference peer Conference USA, with members USM and UAB, could go to a conference-only schedule themselves.
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Sun Belt Conference could go to a conference-only schedule themselves or collaborate with CUSA for an 8 + 2 schedule, which would allow the Jags to hold steady with the schedule they currently have.
It’s unknown if USA will get any compensation for the game cancellation.
We’ll share more as we get information.
Should South Alabama Consider Playing The 2020 Football Season At Ladd-Peebles Stadium?
On Tuesday South Alabama Director of Athletics Joel Erdmann was a guest on some local sports talk radio programs. Erdmann spoke about the Jags scheduling complications caused by the Southwest Athletic Conference’s (SWAC) decision to postpone their football season to spring 2021 due to Covid-19.
South Alabama and Grambling State were scheduled to face off on September 12 in Mobile as the grand opening of Hancock Whitney Stadium, the Jaguars brand new on-campus stadium. Now the Jaguars are scrambling in an attempt to schedule another team to fill the gap in their schedule. Otherwise the Jags will open the new stadium against UAB on September 26th as long as the remainder of the non-conference schedule is unaffected by the pandemic.
Erdmann also spoke about stadium capacity with the current social distancing considerations in place.
Brace yourselves, we are about to start talking numbers. A lot of numbers and percentages.
He said, if the season started today, that Hancock Whitney capacity would be limited to about 25% of the 25,000 seat capacity of the new stadium. This breaks down to about 6,250 potential fans in the stadium. This is predicated on a strict 1-in-4 seat occupancy, which may not be attainable in all sections of the stadium.
The actual capacity may be lower.
For the sake of this article, we’ll assume a maximum capacity of 6,000 as a nice, round number.
The lowest attended game of the 2019 season was against Memphis when the official attendance was 12,373. We are looking at less than half the attendance of the least attended game last season.
Who will get to attend the game?
Among season ticket holders the Priority Points System will be utilized, as was used recently when choosing seating locations at Hancock Whitney Stadium was being sorted out.
But what about the families of student-athletes?
What about students, who pay an athletics fee which allows them to attend football games for free? Let’s assume the administration sets aside 10% capacity for students to attend, which would be 600 seats.
Assuming you allow for two family members per student-athlete and a maximum of 125 student-athletes on a team, that’s 250 seats.
Then do you allow the travel team any tickets at all? At a minimum let’s say you allow two tickets per opponent student-athlete to be fair. With a maximum travel roster of 70 student-athletes, that’s another 140 seats
Based on these numbers: 600 seats for students, 250 for Jaguar football player families, 140 for opponent football player families we get 990 seats. Again for round numbers, lets allocate 10 more seats to make it an even 1,000.
That further reduces the available tickets to Hancock Whitney to 5,000 for season ticket holders.
That is 5,000 seats before we even talk about the families of coaches and staff getting seats to the game.
Now this is a radical idea to throw against the wall but lets do it for conversation: If we have to reduce occupancy to 25%, what if we play another season at Ladd-Peebles stadium?
If we do not use the end zone tarps over the seats like in seasons past, the stadium occupancy is 40,000. If we also reduce it to 25% capacity, we now have 10,000 potential seats. (Since 10,000 is a nice round number, we’re going to use that for Ladd-Peebles, but it may be slightly lower as well since some areas may not be able to ahere to the strict 25% reduction with proper social distancing, etc.)
That is 40% more available seating for Jaguar home games.
Again if we allocate those same 1,000 seats to students, and home and away team families then add 10 to make it an even number, we now have 9,000 available seats for season ticket holders.
Now we are talking 80% more tickets available for fans to attend Jaguar home games in 2020.
Just think, we haven’t even allocated ANY tickets to major sponsors or corporations yet!
Now I know, if you have read this far already, you are thinking something along the lines of “Why would we build a nice on-campus stadium and not utilize it, TJ?!” And you’d be right to do so. But as it has been stated to us in many forms, we are living during an unprecedented situation and South Alabama is in a unique position being able to even have this discussion. Not all schools have a large, while aged, stadium in the same city that could be utilized to boost attendance in this unique time.
What if you are not one of those lucky 5,000 to be able to see ANY of the Jaguar home games in 2020? You have an 80% better chance of being able to attend a game if there is now 9,000 tickets available than 5,000.
Plus would you rather delay the grand opening of Hancock Whitney Stadium to 2021 when, hopefully, we would be able to have 25,000 (or more) crowd into the brand new stadium and give it the grand opening it deserves?
I’m not even taking into account the post-season bowl games played in Mobile. The only one that has committed to play at Hancock Whitney Stadium is the Senior Bowl, and we are so far removed from the game that we don’t even know if it will happen or not.
I guess it boils down to which is the better option for a pandemic-affected 2020 season? A more comfortable but less attended 2020 season OR what we’ve had for the previous 11 season but potentially open to more attendees?
What do you think?
South Alabama’s Game Against Grambling Cancelled; Working On Scheduling New Opponent For Home Opener Sept 12
On Monday, the Southwestern Athletic Conference announced the cancellation of fall sports for the 2020 season. This effectively cancelled the Jags game against Grambling that was set to officially open Hancock-Whitney Stadium.
The SWAC becomes the 5th of 13 overall FCS conferences to announce cancellations their fall schedule due to COVID-19.
The Jaguar Athletics Staff are diligently working to scrounge up another opponent for the September 12th date.
South Alabama isn’t alone in this situation as the cancellation of SWAC and other conference schedules ripple across college football. Some FBS conferences who have announced a conference-only schedule such as the Big Ten and PAC-12.
Most notable is fellow in-state institution, University of Alabama, who had a marquee season-opening game schedule against Southern Cal that was cancelled due to the decision by the PAC-12 conference.
Once we hear something, we’ll pass it along!
Go Jags!
Update From USA AD Erdmann
South Alabama Athletics Director Joel Erdmann released an update concerning sports and Covid-19. He indicates that facemasks will likely be required for football season in addition to temperature checks.
If current social distancing protocols are necessary, attendance at Hancock Whitney Stadium may be as low as 6,000. Attendance will be determined by Priority Points system among Season Ticket Holders.
It seems that attendees will be required to enter at specific portals nearest their seats. Queuing strategies will be put into place for concessions.
Dear Jag Nation:
This is a brief update on our status concerning the pandemic:
– During the week of June 8 75 football student-athletes returned to campus for voluntary strength and conditioning workouts.
– This week the remaining 45 football student-athletes have also returned accompanied by several men’s and women’s basketball student-athletes.
– We anticipate a number of volleyball and soccer student-athletes returning soon after July 4.
– Be assured that all health and safety precautions as recommended by the NCAA and Sun Belt Conference are being enacted concerning the team’s return to campus. This includes testing, daily screening, grouping/distancing strategies and rigorous cleaning/sterilization protocols.
Our intent is to play our fall seasons as scheduled. With that in mind please know we will adjust our operations to protect student-athletes, fans and guests to the best of our ability. Selected game day enhancements may include:
Maintain a playing surface which protects student-athletes, coaches and staff;
– Assigned gates of entry to properly distribute the flow of the crowd;
– Paperless ticketing options;
– Queuing strategies to assist in distancing at concessions and restrooms;
– Extensive cleaning efforts prior to and during events;
– Modifications concerning concessions and catering;
– Screening at gates of entry which could include temperature checks;
– Facemasks will likely be required.
There is much discussion about proper distancing at stadiums and venues. We have plans in place which will guide us accordingly once we know what the capacity will be. We anticipate knowing more details in mid-to-late July.
We look forward to seeing everyone at Hancock Whitney Stadium, the Cage and Jag Gym this fall.
Go Jags!!
Joel
https://usajaguars.com/news/2020/6/25/general-erdmann-provides-south-alabama-athletics-update.aspx
What’s To Come For College Football With Covid-19 Still Looming
As we have now weathered about three months worth of social distancing, mask wearing, and hopefully improved hygiene, we still do not know what this will mean for college football season.
Schools lost spring workout time. Now players are reporting for summer workouts in a phased approach at some schools like South Alabama. But with the season fast approaching in less than three months, what will we be facing?
On the extremes, we have people who think that there won’t be a college football season at all, and others think that the season will go on just like normal. Then you have any number of in between scenarios where maybe it’s a shortened season, reduced number of bowl games, conference schedule only. The list could keep going on and on.
What could be a sign of things to come may have happened in the NFL today. It was announced today that the first six to eight rows of seats, including on-field suites, will be off-limits for fans. They will be blocked off to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 from fans to players. In addition, the NFL is going to allow the teams to sell camera-visible signage in those areas.
So at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, for instance, the school would put a Jag logo tarp on seats in the endzone. The NFL will allow teams to do that with the first six to eight rows of seats in the stadiums, but they can also sell and put ads on them this season to make up for lost revenue.
Will this same kind of decision be made in the College ranks?
Will fans who purchased the prime season tickets near the sideline be able to sit there this season? Will the students be down close to the opposing team yelling in their ear?
If social distancing is necessary for football game attendance, will it be reduced 50% capacity? South Alabama has already let it be known that it will be based on Season Ticket holders first and if that is not enough, then your priority points will be the next determining factor for attendance.
Beyond that the revenue for many schools is largely determined by their football programs. But sometimes what is lost is the revenue generated by football for the cities that the colleges are located.
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said that the loss of a college football season in Tuscaloosa could be $2 Billion. The city was losing $600,000 a week during the spring while the campus was closed. The loss of an entire football season could be devastating to the city, but it could be a possibility.
Football players have started to report to campuses across the nation. The two largest programs in the state, the University of Alabama and Auburn University, have had players test positive for Covid-19 since going back to campus. Clemson announced 23 players test positive in their first test for Covid-19. Then in the last week another 21 football players tested positive including two football staffers (not limited to coaches).
South Alabama is not releasing how many players and staff test positive for Covid-19. Mobile became the state-wide hot-spot for Covid-19 cases early in the pandemic. While Montgomery has overtaken Mobile for the total number of positive infection cases in the state, Mobile remains the county with the most deaths from the virus.
I think the University should be releasing this information to be fully transparent. I know the University has a brand new stadium to start paying for this fall and they don’t want anything to cause season ticket sales to slow, but this information should be released not only for the fans but also for the students on that will be coming back to campus this fall.
WKRG’s Robby Baker spoke with coach Steve Campbell and shared a video showing the disinfecting of the weight room between workouts. Campbell spoke about the testing that occurred before any of the staff and players were allowed to come back to campus, but they have not and say they will not release any information concerning anyone testing positive. Other schools have, why won’t USA release those numbers?
Share with us your thoughts. Do you think USA should release numbers of any positive infections? What do you think the 2020 football season will look like? Will you be coming to the games? Will you attend games if you have to wear a mask?