Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard released a letter to fans on Tuesday outlining the university’s plans in regard to the football season this fall. The letter outlines current thoughts on fans attending games and policy on season tickets for this year and next. Read the full letter below.

May 26, 2020

Dear Cyclone fans,

Greetings! It seems like forever since we have been together as a Cyclone family, and we cannot wait to have that opportunity again in the very near future.

Many of you have reached out recently with positive messages, words of encouragement, and questions about what lies ahead. The most-often asked questions have been “do you think we will play football this fall and will fans be allowed to attend the games?” The purpose of this letter is to begin to answer those questions.

First, we fully anticipate playing football this fall. In order to do that, we have to overcome several initial hurdles (i.e., getting the players safely back on campus, officially starting team activities, conducting preseason practice, etc.) before we can truly start to assess this fall’s season. As of today, we fully anticipate playing football in Jack Trice Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 5.

The second question is more challenging to answer. Attendance at Jack Trice Stadium would be limited to approximately 50% capacity in order to meet the current guidelines established by state and local officials. Those guidelines may be adjusted as time passes. Right now, we are planning as though the capacity of our stadium would be limited to 30,000 spectators.

As of today, approximately 22,000 season tickets have been renewed for this fall. That leaves us approximately 8,000 seats to be filled. Because we need to make plans to accommodate those fans who will be allowed into the stadium (based on state and local guidelines), we have decided to implement the following:

1. Any fan who does not renew their season tickets and make their Cyclone Club donation by June 12, 2020 will not be provided the opportunity to attend any games this fall unless it is later decided that we can safely exceed the 50% capacity restriction.
2. The only fans who will have the opportunity to be in the stadium this fall are those who renew their season tickets and their required Cyclone Club donation (if applicable) by June 12, 2020. If you have not done so already, please contact our staff ASAP to complete those processes.
3. Because we expect to reach the 50% capacity limitation through season ticket sales, we do not anticipate selling single-game tickets unless the capacity limits are raised.
4. Any season ticket holder who does not renew their season tickets for 2020 will continue to have first rights on their same seats for 2021. We believe it is very important to honor prior loyalty, as there may be some fans who are not comfortable attending games this fall or are experiencing financial challenges.
5. Any season ticket holder who renews their season tickets but later decides they are not comfortable attending games this fall because of COVID-19 may request a refund of their season ticket purchase or defer the purchase of their season ticket to the 2021 season.

Lastly, we want to assure you that our staff is working to make the game day environment as safe as possible. After consulting with campus officials, we have concluded there is no reasonable way to guarantee that no one will contract the COVID-19 virus. Trying to adhere to a standard of absolute protection is simply not reasonable. We would either be held accountable for being far too restrictive or, more likely, not restrictive enough.

We will establish, and eventually communicate to you, the mitigation measures that we will implement this fall. Those decisions are currently in the development stage and will be evaluated and tweaked as we learn more about the virus in the coming weeks. It will ultimately be up to each attendee to decide whether they are comfortable attending games given the mitigation strategies, we will implement. That decision will remain a personal choice that all attendees need to make.

We hope this helps better explain our plans for moving forward with the football season this fall. Thank you for your continued support.

Go Cyclones!