Big Ten reverses course, will play 8-game season
After receiving criticism from inside and outside the conference for more than a month, the Big Ten reversed course Wednesday and announced it will have a football season in 2020.
The decision by presidents and chancellors was unanimous, according to Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and other conference officials.
Each team will play eight “regular season” games beginning the weekend of Oct. 23-24 and will play a plus-one game the weekend of Dec. 18-19, including the conference championship game. The other six games will attempt to match the second-place teams from each division, the third-place teams, all the way to the lastplace teams.
A schedule is expected to be released later this week, according to Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez.
Big Ten presidents and chancellors decided in early August to postpone football and all fall sports to the spring semester because of uncertainty regarding the coronavirus. But they changed their minds as they learned more medical information.
Northwestern president Morton Schapiro, who chairs the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors, said he voted to postpone the fall sports in August.
“The medical advice I relied on when I voted five weeks ago said there was virtually no chance that we could do it safely,” Schapiro said. “We weren’t going to have the testing and all the safety protocols and heart considerations and all that.
“Then medical opinion changed. There have been a lot of advances in terms of understanding the pandemic and myocarditis and the like over the past five weeks . ... The facts changed, so our minds changed.”
The game-changer that prompted the Big Ten to reconsider its decision and join the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference in playing football this fall is the development and availability of rapid antigen testing for the coronavirus.
The Big Ten will require athletes, coaches, trainers and other on-field staff to undergo daily testing beginning no later than Sept. 30. Athletes in all sports will be tested daily, which the conference will pay for. Test results must be completed and recorded before each practice or game.
The earliest a student-athlete who tests positive for COVID-19 can return to game competition is 21 days, longer than the usual 14 days in order to do thorough cardiac testing and evaluation.
Ohio State team physician Jim Borchers and Penn State vice president of athletics Sandy Barbour served as medical co-chairs on the Big Ten Return to Competition Task Force. He said the use of confirmatory PCR testing gives the conference “a great advantage.”