Tyler Johnson
[email protected]
LARAMIE, WYOMING (September 25, 2020) – When the Mountain West Conference football season begins in late October, the University of Wyoming will allow fans to be in the stands.
“There will be attendance in War Memorial Stadium based on today’s data and today’s information,” said Tom Burman, the athletic director at the University of Wyoming.
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“The number of fans is still to be determined. My goal is to take care as many season ticket holders as possible. We want to be safe. We want to be diligent. But we also want to try to care of the people who take care of us.”
Sources are reporting that up to 9,000 fans can be in attendance. There will be no tailgating prior or during the game.
Burman also said that tickets will be sold on a single-game basis. The tickets will be electronic. Concessions will be prepackaged.
The Cowboys are playing four of their eight games at home this season.
The hope is to have the eight-game schedule as soon as early next week, but Burman is not sure if that’ll happen.
A few weeks ago, the football team and the Cowboys fanbase were told that there would not be a season this year. But Burman said the access to testing and rapid testing is the key. To speed up the testing process, the university has remodeled an old nearby veterinary clinic into a testing site.
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“It’s been a crazy seven months, but it’s also been a crazy 48 hours to get to where we are today. But we’re thrilled to be there. We all work in this business because we love competition and we love working with young people,” Burman said. “It’s been hard, and I know I speak for Coach (Craig) Bohl on this, it’s been a hard few weeks since we told those football players no. I’m glad we changed direction and moving to an opportunity for them to compete.”
During a press conference on Friday, Sept. 25, head coach Craig Bohl, linebacker Chad Muma and quarterback Sean Chambers, talked about their excitement about getting back on the field to play some football.
“It took a lot of moving parts and a lot of presidents coming together. As coaches, we met last week and came out with a unified vote that we wanted to play on the 24th. There was certainly differences of opinions about when to start. But every head coach in the league felt like it was important for the profile of our conference that we get started,” said Bohl.
The Cowboys practiced as a team for the first time Friday. Bohl said the team practiced in pods to limit the players’ exposure to one another.
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“The first thing that ran through my mind was ‘It’s about time.’ Another emotion that ran through my body was ‘I’m ready to go. I think the team is ready to go,’” said Chambers. “I think we’ve been yearning to play. Watching other colleges around the country playing and knowing we’re not playing wasn’t a good feeling. Now that we have a plan in place for us to play, I think it’s going to be a good feeling for us.”
“I was sitting on my couch, just hanging out and watching the Nuggets game, when I got the news. I just jumped up and got very excited to hear the news that it’s finally official,” Muma said.
Muma also noted that the team has been making sure they were in shape in case anything changed.
“Whenever we heard the news, we had a little offset so we had a break for about a week. But after that, they opened up the weight room for the whole team and if you weren’t in quarantine, you were able to come in and work out. Even if you were in quarantine, I know some guys went to fields and socially distanced there and ran and did work outs there to pick up where we left off this summer,” Muma said.
Now that the football season has begun, it’s back to business.
“We have a responsibility to win football games,” Bohl said.
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