The University of Alabama is planning on playing its football season in the fall with a full 100,000 capacity stadium, the school’s Athletic Director announced Monday.
Greg Byrne made the declaration on his personal Twitter account.
“With this announcement, we've received a number of questions regarding capacity at Bryant-Denny for @AlabamaFTBL in 2021,” Byrne wrote. “We are moving forward with plans to have a full stadium in the fall and will monitor medical guidelines as we have all along. #RollTide.”
Alabama’s 92-year-old Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa – which has been expanded nine times including most recently last year – is reportedly the eighth-largest stadium in the United States and 10th-largest in the world.
The Crimson tied reduced capacity to 20%, or about 20,000, last season due to the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The seven-day moving average of confirmed COVID-19 infections in Alabama has plummeted from a peak of 4,281 on Jan. 10 to nearly 900 on Sunday, worldometers.info reported.
Similarly, the seven-day average of COVID-19-related deaths has fallen from a high of 154 on Jan. 29 to 48 on Sunday.
Byrne’s revelation came hours after the University of Alabama announced it would return to “traditional in-person instruction,” in the autumn semester.
“The University of Alabama, along with other campuses in the University of Alabama System, plans to return to traditional in-person instruction without restrictions on classroom capacity for Fall 2021, as announced today by the UA System,” the school announced on its official Twitter account.
Alabama is scheduled to host seven home games this season, beginning with Mercer University, a 9,000-undergraduate school in Georgia – on Sept. 11.
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