Bob Caslen, Ray Tanner Still Discussing How To Apply Social Distancing To Sports

During a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday evening, South Carolina President Bob Caslen and Athletic Director Ray Tanner discussed how fall sports will be handled.

University of South Carolina president Bob Caslen announced Tuesday that in-person instruction will resume on campus this fall.

During a virtual town hall meeting Tuesday evening, Caslen addressed the concerns that came with his earlier decision, including how sports will be affected.

Caslen said that they are in communication with the SEC and NCAA and are awaiting word on when football season will start.

“Football season is what everybody is mostly concerned about and the truth of the matter is we’re still in conversation and discussion with both the Southeast Conference and the NCAA,” he said. “And we think the schedule will be determined at that level, not necessarily ours. Although we think we’ll have some degree of responsibility for fan attendance and what that fan attendance looks like inside the stadium.”

USC athletics director Ray Tanner was on the panel for the virtual townhall and said that social distancing will be a part of the fan experience this fall.

“I talked earlier today with the Southeastern Conference. We remain in lockstep as far as our fall schedule’s concerned not only with football but the other fall sports as well,” he said. “The health, safety and well-being of our students and our student-athletes, and our fans and our coaches and everybody involved is of paramount importance.”

“Right now we’re approximately four months away from kickoff so we still have a little bit of time to answer some questions. It is likely that social distancing will be in place in Williams Bryce and other venues. We are currently running models to determine what fan attendance could look like. But we’re still excited about the opportunity to have live sports but there is some time and we’ll answer those questions and try to resolve those issues as we move forward.”

Caslen said he and other school officials are still in the process of determining how gatherings of large groups on campus as a whole will be handled.

“So the way we’re looking at this now is we have to determine what the standard of large groups is going to be,” Caslen said. “What’s the limitation? Is it going to be 25, is it going to be 50? What is the social distancing requirement within it? Then you take that standard and you apply it to each area. Whether it’s a classroom, whether it’s a lecture, or Russell House, or wherever there’s student life. Then you see based on that standard what you can and cannot do, then you make the necessary adjustments.”