Boone Pickens Stadium Capacity to Be Limited, per Report

Oklahoma State announced last week that it was implementing new safety measures in and around Boone Pickens Stadium for the 2020 season, including a mask mandate, the creation of additional space between seats, and the cancelation of tailgating. And it appears stadium capacity will be reduced, too.

The near-56,000 capacity of the stadium will be limited to 25% this season to accommodate for the pandemic, per Sports Illustrated, putting the total per-game capacity under 14,000 (excluding suite-level seating). Here’s how OSU plans to implement those changes, per SI.

However, Pokes Report has learned there will be groups of pods throughout the stadium and that Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis has made the decision there will be six-feet of space between each seating pod. Five-feet was conisdered, but Hargis decided on the six-feet. Fan surveys are still being looked at to determine the number of seats per pod but it’s looking like there will be four seats in each. The athletic department is also considering adding six and eight person pods, but will need to determine how many groups there are that are that large. [SI]

The arrangement has a ripple effect on student attendance as well, with only 2,500 student tickets available per game.

If OSU can have 14,000 fans in seats per game this season, it should be considered a minor win. The Big Ten and the Pac-12 aren’t even conducting football this fall and thus losing out on ticket revenue and television revenue. So even if ticket revenue is hamstrung, at least it won’t be completely eliminated. And every dollar counts in a pandemic.

That doesn’t mean a quarter-full stadium won’t be weird, though. Like the rest of 2020, it will require an adjustment.

“You can play football without fans, it’s just like practice,” Spencer Sanders said on this week’s ESPN+ documentary that’s following the team this week. “Fans are a momentum-changer — you throw a touchdown, you look at the stands, you’ve got about 60,000 people screaming for you. That’s just different. Going into a season without that, it’s gonna suck. But am I gonna play? Yeah, I’m gonna play. It’s just not going to be the same as it was.”