One day after the Big Ten announced its revised, conference-only schedule for the 2020 football season, Penn State made a big announcement of its own.

Effectively in accordance with current Pennsylvania policy due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Nittany Lions will play their five home games at Beaver Stadium without fans this season. Pending changes from the commonwealth, that policy will remain in place from the Nittany Lions' season-opener against Northwestern on Sept. 5 all the way through a Nov. 7 home finale against Ohio State.

So what impact will the protocols for this season have? BWI's staff weighs in with its thoughts, here:

I feel bad that Penn State students won't be able to go to football games this season. It's such a monumental piece of that student experience and, in many ways, helps to define what for many people proves to be some of the best years of their lives.

I feel bad for season ticket-holders and just fans in general. For as much as the experience of being at football games in person has gotten normal for me (16 seasons of being at every game, home and away, save for a couple of rare absences will do that), I completely understand how much that opportunity to attend a game, or a few, or all of them, has on many lives.

But, if you'll indulge me for a moment, if games actually happen this fall anywhere, one of my primary fascinations will be to see its impact on officiating.

Readily acknowledging that sportswriters and fans aren't allowed to question its role in the game, I am now, and have been for years, a tried and true believer in an absolutely massive influence over games by officials. And while I always keep things in perspective, happy to excuse even bad officiating as a natural part of the humanity behind an imperfect and unforgiving job, I also refuse to not acknowledge about what's plainly clear.

You know, like this:

Or, you know, maybe even like this:

Would yellow flags have flown if there were no fans in those stands?

Honestly, I don't know, but I'm anxious to find out. My instinct is that the stripes are doing their absolute best given the circumstances, no matter when or where they're doing it. Having shadowed the crew of referee Jerry McGinn for the Blue-White Game a few years ago, who was and is excellent, by the way, I can say with relative certainty that the effort is always earnest.

But that doesn't negate the intrinsic influence of 110,000 rabid fans screaming at you. Remove that element from the equation and I'll be interested to see what comes of it.

Whether or not Penn State's Big Ten brethren, road trips set for Indiana, Michigan, Rutgers and Nebraska, follow suit remains to be seen, but I'll go ahead and make a bet that in-person attendance will be severely restricted everywhere in the conference this season, at best.

This news is a buzzkill for fans, and I’m sure it will be for players, too. More than most other major sports, college football is about the pageantry and the atmosphere that fans create – both inside and outside the stadium. Penn State has been particularly successful at capitalizing on its passionate fan following. The Nittany Lions have the fourth-largest stadium in the world, and they’ve been able to fill it with regularity. It’s one of the things that sets Penn State apart, and the lift that a roaring home crowd provides has boosted the program on game day and also on signing day. Think about the number of recruits over the years who have said that they were dazzled by a visit to a White Out game. It’s more than I can count.

And yet, if there’s a season, players are still going to be highly motivated. Lamont Wade addressed this topic a few months ago, back when it was starting to become clear that limiting or eliminating attendance was one of the concessions that might be necessary in order for a season to take place. Said the senior safety, “I love the game, I want to play hard regardless. The film is still going to get sent out. We still want to win, and I’ve still got to do what I’ve got to do for my brothers. It’s easy whenever I think about it like that.”

When I think about the impact of having not spectators this year, the people I really feel for are the athletes and coaches of Penn State’s nonrevenue sports. The loss of ticket, parking and concessions revenue is going to blow a hole in the budget of one of the country’s most broad-based athletic departments. While Sandy Barbour has taken some steps to mitigate the fiscal damage by instituting salary cuts, I do wonder whether that’s going to be sufficient to stave off the kind of drastic steps that other schools have already taken.

Personally, I’ve been expecting this announcement to come all summer. I know Penn State and other schools need to collect every dollar that they can, but hosting 20,000 fans from all over the region puts a lot of pressure on the school’s shoulder. They’ll have enough of that when students arrive in a few weeks.

I have no doubts that they could spread everyone out inside Beaver Stadium. You could double that number and still accomplish that, but that’s not the case when you go underneath the stands. Also, people are still going to drink. That’s inevitable. Alcohol brings issues, and this isn’t the year to deal with that.

As for the team and how it impacts their chances at a special season, personally, I don’t think it’ll have as big of an impact that some others might. Yes, the home-field advantage at Beaver Stadium is very real. I’m not denying that. A few years ago, I probably wouldn’t be so optimistic, but I think this current roster is really good. Fans causing a few false starts against Ohio State would be nice, but that’s not the difference between wins and losses. Bookmakers in Vegas can show you numbers that suggest a crazy crowd, even one as good as Penn State’s, doesn’t have the impact on results that we often make it out to be.

But make no mistake, I feel for fans. For many, those seven Saturdays are what they live for. I was one of those fans growing up. If this would’ve happened in 2005, I would’ve been devastated. I feel for those people. Also, Penn State seniors that were looking forward to one more fun season in the student section. I would've hated that back in 2010.

You can't help but feel for the players, too. When you’re little, you always dream about making big plays in big moments in front of big crowds. But most importantly, they also understand that this could be a special year for the Nittany Lions, so I don’t see that impacting their mindset as preseason practice gets rolling tomorrow. This can still be a special year.

Starting from a strictly on-the-field perspective, I don’t think anyone can say for certain how this will impact Penn State and its opponents. Nobody has dealt with this before. If we’re going to make projections, I would argue that the absence of fans in the stands works in favor of teams who don’t normally fill their buildings, and against programs who regularly draw crowds of 100,000-plus like Penn State, Ohio State and Michigan. They’ll be more accustomed to the absence of the energy that we typically associate with college football Saturdays. It levels the playing field, too. For example: It’s unlikely that Illinois would pack 60,000 fans into Memorial Stadium when the Nittany Lions visit this season (they drew about 38,000 in 2018), but the Illini could reasonably expect a raucous atmosphere when they visit Wisconsin. In a sport where noise really matters, the absence of crowds might be the ultimate equalizer.

Maybe even worse for Penn State, the Nittany Lions host Ohio State this season. For each of the last four seasons, that game has served as a 60-minute referendum of Penn State’s postseason prospects. A capacity, White Out crowd obviously would give the Nittany Lions a better shot at winning that game than an empty Beaver Stadium. Assuming things return to normal next season, they’ll be back in Columbus without the same benefit.

Beyond the obvious loss of what is one of the better home-field advantages in college football, Penn State will miss out on a season’s worth of gate receipts and other gameday incomes, the totality of which I don’t think anyone outside the athletic department is equipped to estimate. Something else worth tracking will be the impact it has on recruits. Will a season without big crowds in stadiums throughout college football sway big-time recruits into making commitments they otherwise wouldn’t? Like I said at the beginning, there is so much about this we don’t know, but it will certainly be interesting to track trends if and when the college football season begins.

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