Wisconsin Badgers’ athletes are going back to their teams next week. The players will be back with the teammates and all those teams will get ready for the fall season. There is a good amount of excitement around the football team this season as there always is but they can be a Big Ten contender again this season. Will Camp Randall be full? That’s another question in itself. We all have asked the question of if the fans are going to return in the Fall. Let’s do a status check to see where we are right now and see if Wisconsin will have Camp Randall rocking this Fall.

Wisconsin does not need to figure this out tomorrow. This is more of a July problem. Listening to Ryen Russillo talk with Andy Staples and Bruce Feldman about this very topic, both journalists believed this did not need to get solved until the middle of July. That is still a month away. One thing we’ve learned from COVID-19 is that we do not always need to say the first thing that comes to our mind. Too many times people made sweeping generalizations versus actually trusting the data to see what is in front of them. Take Los Angeles for example. One week they didn’t think sports would be back until 2021, and the next week, sports teams were allowed to practice.

This decision will be fascinating to monitor because it is likely a state decision yet there is an unfair advantage if one team plays with a full house and the other does not. My guess is the conferences will have to align to some base level. Let’s say Illinois and Northwestern can only have 25 percent of their stadium full. This would mean that everyone can only have 25 percent full despite what local government might say. Although that becomes complicated when universities are state-run. This could be very messy.

My personal opinion is that there will be no fans during the month of September. If a vaccine is ready in October, they’ll bring fans back. The responsibility is of the team then. It is on the people going to games to be vaccinated if they’re going to be at Camp Randall Stadium. While W.H.O.(To no one’s surprise) bungled the information around asymptomatic carriers, there could be data that shows the virus is far less serious. Some doctors are starting to feel that way while others still have their doubts.

We’ll see how things look come July when we will start getting more answers.

Charlie.