Last week Notre Dame released news that in their most-recent testing, that no football players tested positive for COVID-19. That hasn’t happened in many places as we’ve seen the likes of Clemson, LSU, Texas, Alabama, Ohio State and plenty of other programs suspend football activities because of the number of positive tests.
One school that had not yet been the case at was Northwestern, who hadn’t had a positive test at that time.
Key word in that last sentence: had.
Teddy Greenstein covers the Big Ten and college football like a glove for the Chicago Tribune. Greenstein reports today that Northwestern is pressing pause on football for at least a couple of days after their first player has tested positive for COVID-19.
Also in the Big Ten numbers have come out in regards to the University of Illinois and their COVID-19 test results. This from Shannon Ryan, also of the Chicago Tribune:
#Illini announce since testing in June with the gradual return of athletes to campus, 23 have tested positive for COVID-19.
17 of them were football players.
3 cases overall remain active while the rest have improved. pic.twitter.com/w2lY4zhrwx— Shannon Ryan (@sryantribune) August 3, 2020
As Greenstein pointed out in his article, four Big Ten teams have already suspended football activities at different times this summer as Ohio State, Indiana, Michigan State and Rutgers have all had to hit pause at different times.
Northwestern’s decision to pause football activities now puts that number at five.