What we learned from the Big Ten's fall football press conference

Coaches, players, and fans around the Big Ten finally got the good news they’d been hoping for, as the conference officially announced that it would return to a fall football schedule for the 2020 season on Wednesday morning.

Commissioner Kevin Warren, Northwestern president Morton Schapiro, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, Penn State Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Sandy Barbour, Northwestern Vice President for Athletics and Recreation Jim Phillips, and Ohio State football head physician James Borchers held a joint Zoom press conference following the announcement.

Here are some of the main takeaways from what they had to say…

A little more than a month ago, Warren issued an open letter to the Big Ten community stating that the vote by the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors to postpone the 2020 football season was "overwhelmingly in support of postponing fall sports and will not be revisited."

Well, it turns out that plan was not only revisited, but it ended up being reversed altogether.

Warren and others said the main reason the league changed its stance on playing football this fall was because of the new medical information that came out over the past month and the access to immediate antigen testing.

“Once (doctors) convinced us it was safe to play, we were unanimous in that decision…” said Schapiro, who initially voted against playing this fall back in August. "When the facts change, the mind changes."

Borchers said the advances in COVID testing may have been the biggest factor of all, as Schapiro added that when the league held its first vote, the medical data they had at the time suggested there was "almost virtually no chance that we could do it safely."

While the celebration was on with the announcement of fall football’s return, the news came with a litany of guidelines and protocols that could prove difficult to navigate over the next three months.

The Big Ten will require daily antigen testing for all athletes, coaches, trainers, and others on the field for practices and games.

It will also closely monitor those results from all 14 teams, and there’s a fine line of what will allow players and teams to play.

Borchers said players who tested positive must sit out for a minimum of 21-days – 14 days for to clear COVID-19 and cardiac tests, and then another seven for a “transition period” before returning to the field.

Borchers added that the two biggest factors the Big Ten would track in determining whether a team will be allowed to play each week were “team positive rate” – the number of positive tests divided by the total number of tests administered - and “population positivity rate” – the number of positive individuals divided by total population at risk.

The positivity rate thresholds for teams to have to stop competition are 5.0 percent for “team” and 7.5 percent for “population.”

Oh, and the schedule does not provide any built-in bye weeks.

In other words, Big Ten teams will be walking through minefields all season.

The official Big Ten schedule won’t be revealed until later this week, but Alvarez gave some insight into what the format would look like.

Along with playing eight scheduled games over eight weeks, beginning the weekend of Oct. 23-24, the final week will feature a “plus one” model for a ninth game on the weekend of Dec. 19.

In addition to the Big Ten Championship, the final week will pit East vs. West teams based on their regular season standing. So, the second-place team in the East would play the second-place team in the West, third vs. third, fourth vs. fourth, etc.

Alvarez said the reasoning behind the 8+1 model was to ensure the regular season was more "meaningful" for players that were debating whether to opt-in or out. It also sets up an opportunity for a huge television stage on the ninth week, which would provide a big boost to the league’s TV financial inventory.

Alvarez added that the Big Ten would likely try to avoid scheduling rematches during Week 9, and that the location(s) for the final games were still TBD.

Regardless of who and where Big Ten teams play this season, the conference made it clear that the general public would not be allowed to watch the games in stadiums.

Barbour said there could be exceptions made for player/coach families to attend games depending on local government and campus policies, but for now, that would be it.

"We will see what we can do on a campus-by-campus basis to allow families in," Barbour said.

Now that the Big Ten has approved a fall season, Alvarez said teams would be allowed to begin full practices “immediately.”

While the league’s antigen testing won’t start until Sept. 30, teams will get two weeks not only to get going on preparation for the season, but also to get a better handle on their respective COVID situations.

The good news for Nebraska is that the Huskers have already been practicing four days a week under the previously allotted 12-hours/week, in addition to all of the work its done since players started returning to campus on June 1.

Wisconsin, on the other hand, began a two-week campus-wide quarantine on Monday. Northwestern shut down Greek houses and removed freshmen and sophomores from campus.

Beyond football, Warren said he and the Big Ten leadership planned to meet on Thursday to discuss the next steps for other fall sports.

Warren admitted that figuring out football had been the top priority, so further discussions needed to be had on sports like volleyball, soccer, etc.