Your favorite Husker columnist and mine, Steve Sipple, got a bombshell of a quote today from our beloved Athletic Director Bill Moos. Moos did NOT rule out full capacity in Memorial Stadium as the 2020 Nebraska football season is still tentatively on track to start in early September!

Before throwing a fit and deciding to go bombs a-blazing on your favorite social media platform that is a cancer to society, and thus you are actually contributing to the downfall of the human species as we know it, remember that he is not ruling it out. He did not declare that we will have 200,000 fans in Memorial Stadium on the first Nebraska game day.

He did not say that he hopes your grandma and grandpa will die just so he can make a buck (or a few million). He did not say he doesn’t care about what any other health experts have to say on the subject.

He simply said he is not ruling it out.

Yet you losers are going to go out and throw a hissy-fit because that is what you do. We are all stuck at home, and thus you need to make yourself feel better and show how you care more about the human populace than Bill Moos.

Reddit CFB throws up a tweet that implies that Bill Moos cannot read a simple graph. They must be right. A guy who appears to have been very successful in life can’t read a graph we learned about in 5th grade.

You got him! Go tell your significant other about how awesome you are. “Look mom! Look dad! See what I did!” Maybe you’ll get a sticker. Or maybe you’ll finally get that pat on the back from your dad that you have been waiting on for 25 years. You know the one you thought you would get after you took out the trash for the first time? You wanted that recognition for hard work...

...and you never got it.

Here are Nebraska’s Covid numbers to date:

For Lancaster County:

They appear to be leveling off in a relative way.

This is probably as a result of numerous factors. Number one is likely to be the mask mandate in Lincoln. Omaha if following. Do most of us wish it all came sooner? Probably. People may not like it, but they should embrace it.

You know why you should embrace it even if you don’t want to? Because somebody says some generic statement about the science has a consensus?

Nope.

The reason why is because even if you don’t want to wear a mask, have everybody you know wear one everywhere they go in public. Then if that happens and it doesn’t work then you can get onto your favorite social media platform and tell everybody about how smart you were and everybody is an idiot.

Then go ask for a sticker.

Kevin: The reason why this is blowing up is because it is an incredibly stupid thing to say other than to draw media attention to one’s self. All stop. It is Bill Moos walking around trying to make Fetch happen. News flash: FETCH IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN SO STOP IT!

Look, Nebraska is a great state. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a Nebraskan mention the fact that Memorial Stadium is the state’s third largest city on game day, though, then I would have a lot of bucks by now. Maybe a few hundred even. Guess what, though? That total capacity requires people to come in from all over the state. The stadium regularly has Husker fans from other states in the stands as well.

So unless you are going to literally ID check to see what county they are and preclude high per-capita individuals from walking into their seats, then you are not going to be able to fill it to capacity. That isn’t actually all that safe of a method, either, though. The most sure way to enable a safe(ish), full-capacity crowd would be a restriction such as requiring a negative COVID-19 test from within the last 48 hours prior to game-day to be shown with your ticket to be admitted, but that is even more unrealistic given testing capacity and result turn around time.

So all of that adds up to the blatantly obvious fact that suggesting a stadium can be full capacity of anything other than blow-up dolls (feel free to speculate on what kind of dolls) is literally trolling people for attention, or it is said by the most drunken or clueless of individual that you would wonder how someone rose to the level of position Moos is in if he were actually being serious and weren’t simply just wanting some press. This is merely an example of “No press is bad press,” clearly, so there you have it. This is all just a ridiculous joke obviously and we should move on. But what the hell do I know? I just cover Nebrasketball.

Jon: It’s been a while since I’ve actually sat in a seat in Memorial. People sit right on top of each other, don’t they? That seems.... to be very non-social distancy. Perhaps they could have an almost not full stadium and our beloved Husker fans would be more comfortable, especially the big ones.

I like Moos’ statement, though. It’s hopeful that things will return to normal. Some might think it delusional, but they’re the same ones cranky about everything, aren’t they? So just ignore them and go about your life all polly anna-ish because you’ll enjoy it more than you would otherwise.

Oh, and wear a mask, and PRAY that we have a college football season.