Troy football prepared for first home game of 2020
Sudden changes in the day-to-day and week-to-week schedule have become all too common in today’s college football world. Troy University director of athletics Brent Jones knows this fact well as he’s already had to work through the postponement of two key Trojan football games.
Troy saw it’s home-opener with Louisiana-Monroe swept to December and then watched as the annual Battle for the Belt suffered the same fate just a few weeks later. Now the Trojans soldier on toward what they hope will be the long awaited return to Veterans Memorial Stadium this Saturday with Texas State in town.
“We are really, really excited to have a home game at Veterans Memorial Stadium,” Jones said during Tuesday’s press conference. “I know it’s almost mid-October… We’re really excited about being able to host our great fans as well as our great students this Saturday.”
Troy joins Arkansas State as the only two Sun Belt schools who have yet to play a game underneath their own lights. Both hope to rectify that this Saturday.
For Troy and Jones, this week is a culmination of a hefty amount of preparation from the administrative staff. Though Jones and head coach Chip Lindsey would have loved to play the first home game a month ago, the added time gave Troy more opportunities to improve on its gameday protocols.
“We spent countless amounts of hours, we visited several different places and we viewed over 100 different protocols on what other schools are doing from gameday policies, procedures, protocols,” Jones said. “We feel very, very good about where we are.”
Executive associate athletic director Kyle George visited Florida State during the Seminoles’ first home game to take in how FSU handled gameday operations, per Jones.
“We actually sent Kyle (George) down to FSU for their home-opener,” Jones said. “It wasn’t to watch the game it was to go down there and look to see the egress and ingress. Look to see the concession stands, the long lines, the bathrooms, how they were handling this.”
Jones said the main priorities for Troy’s gameday policies focus on the safety of the students, band, cheerleaders and season ticket holders. All of which will be permitted in attendance on Saturday with a required mask.
Troy will not be using the hard capacity percentage cap that many schools have opted for, but instead will allow all season ticket holders into the game along with up to 3,000 students. According to Jones, the stadium capacity could be anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the 30,420-seat building.
Between Monday and Tuesday, roughly 1,000 student tickets were picked up for Saturday’s contest with Texas State, per Jones. The student section has been expanded to 11 sections from five to accommodate social distancing while the rest of the stadium has a number of available general admission sections that are socially distanced for season ticket holders to sit in.
As far as actually making it to Saturday goes, the football program has been returning negative tests and has yet to be on the wrong side of a postponement.
“Last Tuesday was tough when Coach Lindsey and I went in and I actually broke the news (to the players) that we weren’t going to be able to play South Alabama down there because of some of their COVID-19 issues,” Jones said. “It’s devastating because our student athletes have really, really done a good job.”
Jones says the communication between the athletic directors across the Sun Belt has become a daily occurrence out of necessity.
“I was in constant communication with Tom (Holmoe) the BYU AD,” Jones said. “I was in constant communication with Joel (Erdmann) the South Alabama AD as well as with Dr. Larry Ties at Texas State. I spoke with him today and I spoke with him yesterday. It’s an every day occurrence just checking in and making sure everything is good.”
Troy is set to kick off on Saturday at 2:30 pm with an ESPN3 broadcast. Gates will be opened two hours before kickoff to help spread out the inflow of fans.