When news broke that Ohio State decided to cancel the game against Illinois because of a rise in coronavirus positivity rates in the program, it was quickly assumed it would be a multiple week process to get back on the field. After all, Wisconsin and Maryland missed a couple of weeks straight before things were at the point where the team was healthy enough to compete again.
However, while appearing on a Zoom call with reporters Sunday, the Buckeye decision-makers introduced a bit of optimism into the ingredients of what seemed to be a disappointing COVID-19 casserole of despair.
Dr. Jame Borchers, the lead in this whole return to play medical taskforce for the Big Ten, provided a bit of a timeline on how things transpired. The team was not in a spot to cancel the game against Illinois until Friday evening, finally crossing a guidepost threshold of over 7.5 percent of the players testing positive. The program did not cross the five percent threshold of overall test results coming back positive.
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That all means the team could have played based on what has been set up through the agreement to return to play in the fall. But, the football factory proved everyone wrong in not playing at all costs, erring on the side of safety and caution for its student-athletes.
Even more so, because of where things are, athletic director Gene Smith said the primary focus is getting players healthy enough to play Saturday against Michigan State.
“Our objective now is to continue to focus on the health and safety of our players, to make sure that we provide an opportunity to potentially come back to compete next weekend,” Smith said Saturday. “The tactics and strategies that we will put in place today and tomorrow and the next day and so on is all with an effort to ensure their safety and possibly give them a chance to compete next weekend. That is our primary focus.”
Dr. James Borchers echoed those comments when he provided a medical perspective to where things are.
“We have said all along, we’ll be driven by the data that we have and we’ll look at the data and we’ll make decisions based on the data that we have,” Borchers said. “And we’ll try not to forecast what that data will be, because that gets us into trouble. So we’ll use the data that comes out of our process and make the best decisions moving forward as we move into this next week … the hope is that we’re gonna get our student-athletes back to competition as quickly as possible.”
And then there’s the question of whether or not Ohio State will have enough time to prepare and be in shape for Michigan State. According to head coach Ryan Day, that too can be done with just a couple days of preparation.
“I would just say that I would think you could get it done (play Saturday) by practicing Thursday, making sure you have a good, hard practice Thursday,” Day said. “And then you could walk-through on Friday and play on Saturday. But again, we’ll just have to take it day-by-day and see how it goes.”
So don’t lose hope Buckeye fans. Obviously, the health and safety of everyone involved is paramount in this case, but it looks like Ohio State could still be on pace to play this weekend and beyond, and not just if all the stars align.
We’ll stay on top of this developing story.
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