ANTHONY GETTINO
Assistant Sports Editor
Or at least it will be at the end of October.
But that’s right, the Big Ten unanimously voted to restart their college football season starting Oct. 24.
The Big Ten is one of the five largest athletic conferences in Division 1 sports, known as one of the Power Five.
The league announced the decision just over a month after it originally voted on the postponement of its football season.
At that time, though, it was said to be a final decision and would “not be revisited.”
The protocols that the Big Ten put in place are the most strict of any of the conferences that are playing. Daily antigen testing starts at the beginning of October for all athletes and coaches, as well as a mandatory 21-day period of sitting out if you test positive.
All of this comes after players and their parents began to try and reverse the league’s course of action with petitions as well as organized demonstrations outside of the league’s headquarters.
The Big Ten will follow an eight game, conference-only schedule that concludes with a conference championship game that plays one day before the College Football Playoff Selections.
In addition to the conference championship game that day, the league will have the other teams in the conference play a final game where they will play their tangent seed from the other division of the league.
For example, the second seed in the East will play the second seed in the West.
The Big Ten now has a chance to go from losing millions of dollars this football season relative to its counterparts, the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference, to being on par with them, as well as gaining a possible national championship.
Before the league opted out of the fall season, Ohio State was a favorite to make the National Championship, Penn State was a top 10 rated team that needed one or two things to go their way through the season to make the playoffs and Michigan was considered a dark horse as well.
Now they have a chance.
How will the shortened time period they have to practice affect them relative to teams in other conferences?
It’s unknown as of now, but one thing’s for sure — the Big Ten has made things far more exciting for college football.