Tennessee football at South Carolina: 10 keys to the game

10. Effect of South Carolina crowd noise

As we mentioned in the opening slide, this year is a little bit different because all the stadiums are at limited capacity due to the pandemic. Williams-Brice Stadium will have its capacity reduced to about 20,000 fans, and they will be spread out to maintain social distancing. With that fact, it’ll be hard to see how they can generate proper crowd noise.

However, crowd noise is still a thing, and this is still a night game. You also wonder if there will be a way to pump in crowd noise. Taking all this into account, while it’s not what it normally is, all signs point to this still being somewhat of a factor, and Tennessee football will have to be ready for it if it’s going to get the season started off on the right foot.

Obviously, as a fifth-year senior quarterback, Jarrett Guarantano should be used to dealing with such noise. He was the key reason for the Vols winning their final two road games last year, both of which came down to the fourth quarter and occurred at night. Oh, and both stadiums were at full capacity as well.

This year, despite Jauan Jennings and Marquez Callaway gone, Guarantano should be able to handle much more limited noise in a night road game again. If breaking in the new receivers makes it tricky, though, the Vols could be in trouble. Jeremy Pruitt still has lots of young talent, so these guys need to be ready to go.