Hear ye, hear ye. According to comments Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith made to the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio Stadium will be at 100 percent capacity this fall.
That’s right. The ‘Shoe will be packed again for the first time since the Buckeyes beat Penn State on November 23, 2019. when the Oregon Ducks come to town on September 11. That’s a long time — 658 days to be exact. Think about that for a minute.
It wasn’t necessarily an official statement the Ohio State Department of Athletics made, but rather captured in a conversation Smith had with WBNS 10 TV’s Dom Tiberi.
“Yeah, you know, we’re going all the way live,” Smith told Tiberi. “Tailgaiting — we don’t see any change in what we’ve had prior to COVID. Now, we’re hopeful that we don’t end up in a situation where we have a huge spike as a result of the Delta variant, but right now, we’re all the way live. We’re — full stadium, full tailgating, the whole nine yards.”
Gene Smith just told @DOMTIBERI that Ohio Stadium will be full capacity with tailgaters this fall. pic.twitter.com/FWN649DL1r
— Dave Holmes (@DaveHolmesTV) July 6, 2021
If you’ve followed other college programs in and around the country and within the Big Ten, this news is really somewhat expected, but you just never know until you get confirmation. And hearing the head of the athletic department on the banks of the Olentangy state that things are pretty much back to normal this fall is enough confirmation for me.
Party on, Buckeye fans. I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say the game against Oregon might be one of the loudest the Horseshoe has ever played host to.
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