I don't know all the rules, but I'm sure tomorrow's paper will have them spelled out pretty well.
https://bigten.org/documents/2020/9/16//Medical_Subcommittee_Update_Overview.pdf?id=6818
The Husker prick press corps doesn't wait until tomorrow.............
But there are other ways COVID-19 could knock a Big Ten team out of a game without the program necessarily being down for 21 days.
» Meeting the “red/red” threshold limit on the Big Ten testing protocols. That means 5% of the team, on a seven-day rolling average, tested positive for COVID-19, and 7.5% of the team population (coaches, trainers, staff, administrators) tested positive. A minimum seven-day halt is put in place for practice or competition.
» If 2-5% of the team or 3.5-7.5% of the team population tests positive, this is the “orange/orange” threshold. The minute any Big Ten team meets that, according to protocols, it appears to have the discretion to “consider viability of continuing with scheduled competition.”
How does a team meet red? Here’s where we do some math.
The Team Positivity Rate (TPR) is calculated daily. A team can test 170 people six days a week, and the Big Ten recommends 120 players and 50 staff — Nebraska is doing that, per a team official — but it allows flexibility in those ratios. That’s 1,020 tests per week, which equals the rolling average because the denominator accumulates.
In order to meet the red testing threshold on the TPR, a team that takes 1,020 tests would have to have 51 positives.
To meet red on the TPR takes a massive outbreak, the kind that would indeed shut down a team for three weeks. It’s hard to do. Given that a lot of these teams had players test positive months ago, it may be darn near impossible.
The Population Positivity Rate (PPR) is different in an important way. That denominator stays at 170 all week. It doesn’t change regardless of how many total people you test, either.
In the PPR, the testing threshold is 7.5% to get into red. And that only takes 13 positive tests among players and staff. That’s not a massive outbreak.
It’s also not an automatic pause. Only red/red is an automatic pause. Again: It takes a ton of positives to get to red/red. But orange/red? That can be done with just a minor outbreak.
And at that point it’s up to the team in orange to decide how it wants to proceed.
There’s another potential curveball. Some teams may not be testing 170 players and staff for a variety of reasons. One reason: Players who already tested positive months ago aren’t being tested now.
Remember when Wisconsin paused football and men’s hockey workouts in September? The Badgers did so because of rising cases.
The Big Ten has a policy that doesn’t require athletes to be tested within 90 days of their recovery from the virus. The Wisconsin State Journal reported that 56 football players have tested positive for the virus from early June through Oct. 26.
How many of those 56 are being tested now? It matters because the 170 could become smaller very quickly if those players aren’t being tested.
It’ll be worth watching over the next several days. Remember:
» It’s really hard to have a TPR hit 5% for a week, unless you’re testing way below the limit or you have a massive outbreak.
» It’s not hard to have a PPR hit 7.5% for a week, but that doesn’t necessarily shut down a team.
» We don’t know if Wisconsin’s issue is TPR or PPR. If it’s TPR, the Badgers will have major problems for a month. If it’s PPR, perhaps not.
The math is crucial.
