There are no distinctions between a 25,000-seat outdoor football stadium and an 8,500-seat indoor basketball arena, according to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s guidelines for reopening safely during the pandemic.
All sports venues in the state, regardless of capacity or whether the facility hosts indoor or outdoor events, are currently capped at 250 spectators under the entertainment and public amusement section of the guidelines.
“It doesn’t seem to make a lot sense to me that they would be the same,” James Madison athletic director Jeff Bourne told the Daily News-Record on Thursday. “But, again, I find myself constantly yielding to the medical science side of it and I’ll take their advice. But, it would appear to me that in outdoor venues there’s less room for transmission than in indoor [venues].”
Bourne and JMU are ready, he said, if restrictions loosen by Feb. 20 at noon when the Dukes kick off their spring football season against Morehead State at Bridgeforth Stadium. Bourne said he’d like for JMU to be able to sell at least some tickets for the abbreviated season, but can only do so if Gov. Northam’s office allows for greater attendance.
The Dukes have five regular-season home contests scheduled in the eight-game campaign.
“We’re willing and we’re prepared to move forward ASAP in the event that it were to develop,” Bourne said. “So we’re just being cautiously optimistic and keeping our fingers crossed.”
In each of the last four fall seasons, JMU finished in the top three in FCS for home attendance.
The Dukes averaged 18,108 fans per contest in 2019, drawing 162,974 in total that year. And on the heels of winning their second FCS national title in 2016, the Dukes were second in the country for attendance the following fall as 195,514 visited Harrisonburg over nine games in 2017.
“We’d love for the opportunity for the state to be in a position where from a facility standpoint,” Bourne said, “we’re able to accommodate more patrons for individual games than where the current restriction is. That’s especially because we’re hosting the [Colonial Athletic Association] men’s basketball championship in the spring. It’d be great to see that open up, but for the sport of football and it being an outdoor venue, I’d love to have more fans in the stands.”
The CAA men’s basketball tournament is slated to be held March 6-9 at the Atlantic Union Bank Center.
Football home dates are Feb. 20, Feb. 27 (noon vs. Robert Morris), March 13 (4 p.m. vs. William & Mary), March 20 (4 p.m. vs. Richmond) and April 10 (4 p.m. vs. Elon).
Bourne said while JMU hopes for changes from the state on crowd restrictions, the school is currently trying to secure regional television time to broadcast home games in order for fans to be able to watch the Dukes on TV.
“We’ve of course invested in our brand,” Bourne said, “and we feel like given where our program is that it’s an important piece for us. I think our coaches would say the same with regard to recruiting, so we’ll keep working diligently, but it’s my hope that we have every game that we can televised.”
In the past, NBC Sports Washington and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network have televised JMU football games. In 2019, four of the Dukes’ six home games were shown on MASN or MASN2 and the two others were shown on NBC Sports Washington.
“The one thing this year that’s been an issue for is, to televise a game you have to be a little bit flexible,” Bourne said. “But our opponents are traveling the day of [the game] and going back, so when they do that it means the game is probably going to be forced into a 4 o’clock window. And it’s difficult to get linear coverage in the 4 o’clock window, so that’s been one of the challenges we’ve had to deal with.”
All games will be available on FloSports digitally as part of the CAA’s agreement with the media company, but Bourne would like to have the television option for fans, too. The reason flexibility is crucial for JMU is because those regional sports networks have to give priority to the professional teams they own the broadcast rights for.
MASN is home to the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball. NBC Sports Washington is home to the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League and the Washington Wizards of the National Basketball Association.
Those teams have dates coinciding with the JMU spring home games.
The Orioles and Nationals have spring training exhibitions scheduled for Feb. 27, March 13 and March 20 and then regular-season games scheduled for April 10. The Wizards are slated to play Feb. 20 and Feb. 27 and the Capitals have regular-season contests on Feb. 20, Feb. 27, March 13 and April 10.
“So we’ll continue to monitor through the start of the season and see where it goes,” Bourne said.
