Kansas football: No fans at first home game, maybe at later games?

It’s official, Kansas football will not have fans in attendance for their first game of the season, but it’s still a very fluid situation.

University of Kansas Chancellor Douglas A. Girod issued a statement today announcing that Kansas football will not have fans in the stands for their first home game of the season against Coastal Carolina. Considering some other Big 12 schools like Iowa State and Texas are still having around 25 percent capacity at their stadiums, this is a somewhat surprising decision.

As you can probably guess, Kansas football fans seem to be split right down the middle on whether or not the administrators made the right call. One thing that doesn’t seem to be talked about enough though is the fact that this isn’t an indefinite rule.

It’s actually a fluid situation, as evidenced by this piece of the statement:

"“We will continue to evaluate safety conditions with the hope that we can welcome fans to athletics events after September. We will report back to you as we approach our second home football game, which is slated for Oct. 3 against Oklahoma State.”"

There’s still a very real possibility that we could have some attendance at Kansas football games this season, especially if schools like Texas and Iowa State don’t have any issues. The good thing about this plan for Kansas is if those schools do see significant infection rate increases (and they very well could), Kansas will have easily made the right call.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 in these situations, and the University will face backlash no matter which way they go. The fact of the matter though is that as of now, we are playing college football this season. That’s a lot more than some other teams can say.