From Sam McKewon.....................
As padded practices are scheduled to begin this week, the Big Ten will launch a testing initiative as aggressive as the NFL, which through several weeks hasn’t experienced a blip in its schedule. Major League Baseball, after early hiccups, has stabilized, too. The Big Ten should be able to duplicate their success.
Short of the symptomatic-only approach, six-days-a-week antigen testing probably achieves the closest thing to an entire roster. And the Big Ten’s positive test thresholds are stringent enough that, if a team falls short and has to shut down operations for a week, it’s doing so with a much smaller spread of the virus than what Memphis dealt with or Notre Dame may be navigating.
But the nature of college athletics will test that theory. The rosters are bigger. The coaching and support staffs often can be, as well.
Pro athletes are far more likely to be married and have kids, which tends to anchor them to fewer locations during the week. Pro athletes also aren’t walking around campuses on a frequent basis. If the Big Ten protocols and testing frequently can’t control spread among its 14 programs, it tells us something interesting about the difference between college and pro sports.
Eyeballs will be on Nebraska. NU fought to play football for football’s sake — Ohio State doesn’t have to apologize for its self-interested motives, but self-interested the Buckeyes are — and now must, with the league’s largest roster, perform a high bar routine that sticks the landing.
In an appearance on the Husker Sports Network, Frost said the Big Ten’s standards “have us worried a little bit.”
“Just the number of kids who can be current positive with COVID, and the limit on that before you’re told that you can’t play that week,” Frost said. “We’re going to have to be really careful.”
Frost and Co. will have a fuller chat with the media this week. We’ll drill down into the tweaks Nebraska is making — on and off the practice field — to meet the balance of safety and quality preparation.
