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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Michigan did everything in its power to keep it’s one-game cancellation against Maryland isolated to one game. However, with rising cases within the football program, it had to make the decision to cancel the 2020 iteration of the Ohio State game.
The Wolverines brass — Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel, head coach Jim Harbaugh, medical director Dr. Sami Rafat and chief medical officer Darryl Conway — met with the media on Tuesday evening to discuss the program’s decision to not hold The Game for the first time since 1917.
“This is not a day that I envisioned we would have,” Manuel said. “It was not an easy outcome to take, as we wanted to, with everything that we have — the Michigan – Ohio State game is the greatest rivalry in this sport — so this is a really hard day, hard time. For me, for Jim, for our team, for our staff, for our university, for our fans — of both teams, I’m certain.
“But we had a trend with a number of positive tests that continued to go up over the weekend. So in the last seven days, they have not slowed. We were not cleared to participate in practice by our medical staff and we were looking at, in terms of, by the end of the week, much wouldn’t have changed, and we still don’t have a total grasp of this virus on our team. So we are here today, we made the decision this afternoon that we would not be able to participate. We weren’t even cleared to practice today and the medical staff felt that we would not be able to participate Saturday. And so to afford Ohio State and the Big Ten Conference the ability to adjust where necessary, we felt it was best to talk to Kevin Warren and Gene Smith and let them know our decision today.”
Rafat chimed in, noting that medically, the team wasn’t cleared to practice, and that it wasn’t going to have the COVID-19 situation under control by Saturday. “Simply, at this point, the prevalence of COVID on our team, the impact of COVID on our team, is simply too great to allow for the safe return to full practice and full activity.”
There’s a misconception — especially after ESPN College GameDay host Kirk Herbstreit made off-the-cuff remarks that Michigan could cancel the game to keep Ohio State out of the playoff — that the players didn’t want to take the field against the Buckeyes. Two people, who spoke to WolverinesWire on the condition of anonymity, strongly refuted that notion off-the-record, noting that the players were still eager to take on their arch-rival. That’s especially true of those who would be participating in this matchup for the final time.
That sentiment was echoed by Harbaugh, who said that the players were more than ready to play, if the team was medically cleared to do so.
“For me, this goes back — really for everybody that’s been in football, especially college football — the situation we found ourselves in, we knew there’d be obstacles,” Harbaugh said. “The situation that we’re in today is that the players, the players, to a man, wanted to play this game. The daily — this is a daily process, and we follow the daily decisions that are made, and we proceed with what’s in the best interest of the health and safety for our players and our staff. Warde put it very well, and tomorrow there’ll be more information. There’ll be more decisions made. We’ll continue to follow those decisions for what’s the best for the health and safety of our players.”
As Manuel notes, it wasn’t like Michigan played last week and that these COVID-19 cases arose from nowhere this week. The Wolverines canceled the final home game of the 2020 season against a Maryland team it very well could have beaten on the field, as the two programs had similar records on the year and the maize and blue have beaten the Terrapins every year since 2015 forward.
Manuel reiterates that Michigan wanted to play this game, but with cases rising throughout the community in Ann Arbor and in the state as a whole, health and safety were paramount and the biggest deciding factor.
“We paused last week because of the increase in numbers on a daily basis, and those numbers kept increasing through this week,” Manuel said. “Through the weekend and through early this week. So for me, and more importantly for our medical staff, as we started to look at the number of our players who were impacted by COVID and impacted by quarantining, it became really apparent to us all, no matter how much we wanted to play the game — we started back in March with the goal of putting the health and safety of our student-athletes, our coaches, our staff is the first priority. And, as numbers continue to grow, we can’t ignore and put first how much we want to play this great game against Ohio State. We have to put their health and safety first, and until we have a good sense of that and control of that, there’s no reason we should move forward knowing we don’t have a good handle on this, COVID cases on our team right now.”