Plenty of aspects of American life and culture have suffered mightily through the last eighteen months of COVID-19 — a fact nobody on this campus is unaware of. Sports, although not a necessity, have been a casualty of this pandemic as much as the rest of our culture. And while there is still a debate raging over the practicality and safety of allowing fans back into stadiums this fall, this week has shown the value of spectators being present at any level of competition.
College football is the prime example of the beauty of a crowd even in a normal year, and the pandemic has only emphasized the effect. The biggest and loudest stadiums in the country are all college football arenas, and the best home field advantages were on full display this last weekend.
Virginia Tech’s crowd at Lane Stadium, riding on the wave of an upset victory over tenth-ranked UNC, finished Friday night by dancing to a Richter-scale-moving edition of “Enter Sandman.”
Wisconsin’s student section at Camp Randall Stadium rivalled the Hokies, appropriately jumping around to House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” even during a loss to Penn State.
Arenas of more than 100,000 cheered on their teams in Knoxville, Austin, and Ann Arbor, and arguably the most historic stadium in college football - the Rose Bowl - had one of the loudest crowds in the country as UCLA upset sixteenth-ranked LSU. The crown jewel of the evening featured two top five teams in Georgia and Clemson, and while the game was low-scoring and at a neutral site, the mixed crowd in Charlotte brought the energy the game deserved.
The difference while watching from last season was impossible to miss. It was an incredible weekend of football across the nation, but it was the fans that reminded us what a hole the absence of spectators left in the world of sports.
Nowhere was that more evident than on Scotland Yard here on campus on Tuesday night. It had been almost two years since a home soccer game had been played with a full complement of fans, and the atmosphere was notably different than those of last year’s games.
Chants both old and new were sung loudly and with passion, especially a stirring rendition of “When the Scots Come Marching In.” Energy was evident all night long, hitting its peak when senior Parker Owen smashed home a penalty kick and junior Nathan Laughlin acrobatically cleared a ball off Covenant’s goal line.
While the Scots lost a heartbreaker to Sewanee 2-1, games like this serve as a reminder of what we’ve been missing for more than a year. Hopefully this fan support carries on through the end of the fall and on through the winter and spring as all our Covenant teams return to action.
There are plenty of energetic atmospheres that we get the privilege of experiencing in our culture, environments that include concerts, dances, and weddings. None, however, compare to the electricity of a college gameday, whether that be in a six-digit-capacity stadium or our very own Scotland Yard. We got to see that excitement unfold this last week, and hopefully we will continue to see it both on our campus and beyond.