Dan Mullen was mad. He was mad that his team lost a football game and part of that anger spilled out into what he perceived was a disadvantage for his football team in the game they just lost.
The announced crowd at Kyle Field was 24,079, which would be roughly 23-24% of the official capacity of 102,733. From the press box, it looked like the official count that Texas A&M announced was correct, but TV cameras across the field showed fuller, less socially distant sections directly under the press box. Regardless, Mullen is a football coach who can smell a perceived disadvantage from 10 miles away and when he saw more fans at Kyle Field than he did the previous week at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium he was pissed.
“It was a great day of football, great atmosphere here. Crowd was certainly a factor in the game, I will certainly say that. I know our governor passed that rule, so certainly, hopefully the university administration decides to let us pack the Swamp against LSU … 100 percent, because that crowd was a major factor in the game,” Mullen said after the game. “So I certainly hope our university administration follows the governor. The governor has passed a rule that we’re allowed to pack the Swamp and have 90,000 in the Swamp to give us the home-field advantage Texas A&M had today.”
When given a chance to walk back his statement, Mullen doubled down.
“Absolutely want to see 90,000 in The Swamp. There were. … I don’t think the section behind our bench, I didn’t see an empty seat. It was packed,” Mullen said. “The student section, there just have been 50,000 behind our bench going crazy. Hopefully, that creates a home-field advantage for us next week because now we passed a law in our state that we can do that. We want our students out there cheering us on to give us that home-field advantage.”
Florida is operating at roughly 20% capacity, allowing just under 17,000 fans to attend games and they are enforcing that number, as well as taking numerous precautions on game day. Scott Stricklin told the Orland Sentinel that Florida, as of Saturday night, had no plans to add additional fans, despite Florida’s governor Ron Desantis moving the state into Phase 3, which allows for businesses to operate at 100% capacity.
“We continue to follow UF Health and campus guidelines,” Stricklin told the Orlando Sentinel. “I’ve not heard anything about campus adjusting [its] guidelines.”
When the SEC decided to bring football back this fall Dan Mullen began a campaign to have the league set universal guidelines or mandates that would govern all 14 teams the same. Rather than doing that, the league office in Birmingham shrugged its shoulders and, for all intents and purposes, said do whatever you want.
The league left it up to each institution to decide how many fans they would have. The expected the schools to act accordingly with their state and local officials, health professionals, and to allow or not allow as many people to games on Saturdays as they felt was safe. Florida has done just that and after months of planning have come up with a set of guidelines for how they plan to counteract the pandemic and provide a safe environment for people to watch games in Gainesville.
Gotta say, I don’t hate that Idea. We need all the help we can muster up! While we’re at it, rotate in the best 11 large bodies in the stands on “D”!
Go Gators!