Big Ten College Football To Resume Play; Trump Claims Credit

ROSEMONT, IL — Big Ten college football is set to return next month, conference officials announced Wednesday. Chancellors and presidents of conference universities voted unanimously to begin competition as soon as Oct. 23, reversing last month's decision to cancel football and other fall sports due to uncertainty over the medical risks of playing amid the pandemic.

All players, coaches and other people on the field during practices or games must be tested daily for the coronavirus, according to conference officials. Anyone diagnosed with COVID-19 will be barred from returning to a game for 21 days. They will undergo extensive cardiac testing, with the data used for a registry to attempt to learn more about the impact of the disease on the hearts of elite athletes who contract COVID-19.

Each school will designate a "chief infection officer" to handle collecting and reporting data from test results, which must be recorded before every game. If a player tests positive with one of the rapid antigen tests they will be given daily, they will get a more sensitive follow-up molecular test to confirm the result, according to the conference.

“Everyone associated with the Big Ten should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities,” said Dr. Jim Borchers, co-chair of the Big Ten's Return to Competition Task Force medical subcommittee and team doctor at The Ohio State University, in a statement.

“The data we are going to collect from testing and the cardiac registry will provide major contributions for all 14 Big Ten institutions as they study COVID-19 and attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease among wider communities,” he said.

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Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro chairs the council of university chiefs and the task force's steering committee. Last month, he was one of the 12 school leaders to vote to cancel the season. In a statement Wednesday, he said the new comprehensive testing scheme and health precautions allowed for college football to be played safely.

“From the onset of the pandemic, our highest priority has been the health and the safety of our students. The new medical protocols and standards put into place by the Big Ten Return To Competition Task Force were pivotal in the decision to move forward with sports in the conference,” Schapiro said. “We appreciate the conference’s dedication to developing the necessary safety procedures for our students and the communities that embrace them.”

At a news conference Wednesday, Schapiro said he and other university leaders relied on the advise of medical professionals.

"We met with doctors over and over and over again," he said. "In the Big Ten there are a lot of medical experts, and once they convinced us that it was safe to play, it was a unanimous decision."

An eight-game schedule is expected to be released later this week, with daily testing set to begin by the end of the month.

If positivity rates rise above 2 percent of tests or 3.5 percent of personnel, teams must take more measures to limit the spread of the virus and consider the viability of scheduled games. And if the rolling average of team positivity rises above 5 percent of tests conducted — or if more than 7.5 percent of players and staff contract the virus — the squad must halt practice and competition for at least a week.

Individual universities may also suspend play on a week-to-week basis if they, their opponents or broader school communities have major negative changes in coronavirus metrics, according to a statement from Rutgers University.

Pat Fitzgerald, head football coach at Northwestern, said he and his team have been focused on being ready for kickoff whenever it happens.

"I'm ecstatic that the Big Ten has built a plan to safely allow our guys the opportunity to play the game they love," he said in a statement. "Putting that date on the calendar is an emotion life for our whole locker room and the Wildcats community."

As of Wednesday, there have been more than 10,000 cases of the virus detected at Big Ten schools, according to a collection of publicly reported COVID-19 data at schools in the conference. Ohio State had the most positive test results, followed by the University of Illinois — which has its own comprehensive testing protocol — followed by the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania State University.

Last month, about two dozen parents of players on Big Ten Conference teams gathered outside its Rosemont headquarters to protest a lack of transparency over the Aug. 11 decision to cancel the fall season, which came less than a week after the conference announced its fall schedule.

President Donald Trump has vocally advocated for Big Ten football to resume and claimed credit for assisting the season's reinstatement. White House representatives told reporters there were more than 300 calls between the White House and Big Ten players and officials, although they declined to say whether the Big Ten is using the federal resources the president previously offered the conference.

"Great News: BIG TEN FOOTBALL IS BACK," Trump tweeted Wednesday. "Have a FANTASTIC SEASON! It is my great honor to have helped!!!"

Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, described the unanimous vote of conference officials as a "triumph" that proves the president's response to the public health crisis is working.

"College football is an enormous part of fall Saturdays for millions of Americans, and it is coming back, thanks in no small part to the leadership of President Trump," he said in a statement. "We know that Joe Biden would not have pushed for this, since he has looked for every reason to keep our country closed for as long as possible, because he believes it will help him politically."

The campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's nominee for president, started running advertisements last month in Big Ten media markets that blamed Trump's coronavirus response as the primary reason for the cancellation of sports in the conference, which reportedly led White House aides to set up a phone call between Trump and Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren.

Conference officials said all Big Ten sports will eventually require testing protocols. No information about plans for sports other than football was announced Wednesday.