It sounds like Ohio State’s game against Illinois is still on for Saturday, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Buckeye program is dealing with at least a mild case of positive coronavirus results that put the game in jeopardy earlier this week. That news was first reported by Bucknuts Dave Biddle Wednesday.
Ohio State has always taken a stance on not revealing specifics around any players that may be out because of COVID-19 protocols, and it is continuing to protect the privacy of its athletes by not releasing a player availability report it normally releases on Fridays. That report will be delayed until two hours prior to kickoff per a university spokesman.
It would be pretty easy to determine which players may have potentially tested positive by reading between the lines depending on which players are listed as unavailable despite not suffering any sort of known injury.
So, we won’t be bringing you any sort of player availability report as normal until tomorrow morning around 10 AM. What we can tell you is that the team practiced yesterday and is scheduled to fly to Champaign, Illinois tonight at 9 p.m. Also, Justin Fields was shown slinging passes around, so it’s clear he is not in any sort of COVID-19 protocol.
The game is still on at this point, and unless something drastic changes over the next few hours, we’ll have more of an update tomorrow morning.