Badgers deny Mertz’s positive
Two reports say QB awaiting second test to confirm first result
Wisconsin says nobody who played in the season opener Friday night against Illinois tested positive for COVID-19 or reported having any symptoms beforehand, amid weekend reports that quarterback Graham Mertz has tested positive.
The Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel and Wisconsin State Journal reported Mertz would be taking a second test to determine whether his first test was a false positive. The Journal- Sentinel reported Mertz’s positive test came Saturday, one day after the Badgers’ 45-7 home victory over the Illini.
School officials say they won’t release any testing information regarding individual athletes because of privacy concerns.
Big Ten protocols say that athletes who test positive through point- of- contact daily testing must take a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm the first result. If that second test confirms a positive result, the athlete can’t play again for at least 21 days.
Mertz set a school record for completion percentage (95%) and matched a school record for touchdown passes in a game (five) in his first career start.
Indiana goes polling
Indiana jumped into the AP poll at No. 17 after pulling off the most dramatic upset of the weekend, and Ohio State moved up to No. 3 after a dominant season debut.
Clemson remained a rock-solid No. 1, and Alabama was No. 2. The Tigers received 52 first-place votes, and the Crimson Tide got the remaining 10.
Ohio State leaped two spots after easily dispatching Nebraska. No. 4 Notre Dame and No. 5 Georgia each slipped a spot behind the Buckeyes.
Indiana pulled off a stunner in overtime to jump into the rankings, beating then-No. 8 Penn State to earn the program’s first victory against a team ranked in the AP top 10 since 1987. The Hoosiers snapped a 25-year absence from the poll last season but stayed there just one week.
Indiana has its best ranking since 1993, when it also reached No. 17. With Rutgers coming up next week, the Hoosiers might see a longer stay in the poll than last year. Then again, the Scarlet Knights won their opener, too.
Penn State slipped 10 spots to No. 18 after losing to the Hoosiers for just the second time in 24 meetings since joining the Big Ten.
Big Ten gets a big boost
What’s up with Ohio State moving past Notre Dame after the Fighting Irish had their most impressive victory of the season, against Pittsburgh?
Remember, the Buckeyes were No. 2 in the preseason and a close second to No. 1 Clemson.
When the Big Ten postponed its fall season, Ohio State and the rest of the conference’s teams became ineligible for inclusion in the rankings. Then the Big Ten decided to play in the fall after all, and those teams became eligible again. But some voters decided they would wait until teams played before being considered for inclusion.
That held back the Buckeyes and some other Big Ten teams for a few weeks. Now that all the voters are including Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan, et al., those teams got an extra boost this week.