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istry stuff. Usually, I'll have the guys over to my house a lot, whether it's in the basement watching games and eat- ing, whether it's barbecuing, whether it's taking them to Champs or to the bowling alley and just having some fun. "I talked to my trainer and said I wanted to have the freshmen over to my house for dinner next Sunday, are you OK with that? He said, OK, you can do it, but you can't do this, you can't do this and you can't do this. It didn't sound like a whole lot of fun by the end of it – pre-boxed meal, everybody has to [maintain] six feet of social distancing. … So how is it not going to be football, football, football and school, without some of the fun things that we do as coaches to build that chemistry? That's important, and that's going to be one of the challenges." When the Big Ten announced Sept. 16 that its on-again-off-again fall season was back on again, the news was greeted warmly by coaches, players and fans alike. It may not have represented a full return to normalcy, but at least it was an approximation of normalcy – a new nor- mal that the league's primary stakehold- ers could accept. It allowed coaches to coach, players to play and fans to watch, albeit from their living rooms, since in- person attendance was ruled out. But as Franklin warned repeatedly after the league's announcement, it will be im- portant to bear in mind over the coming weeks and months just how far removed this season is from its predecessors. "We just can't look at anything like how we've done it in the past. This is all different," he said. "The schedule is going to be different. Camp, if you call it camp, is going to be very different. … From a practice perspective, from a meeting perspective, [everything] lead- ing up to the season is going to be very different. We just have to approach it that way, and if you try forcing it back to the normal model, that's not going to work. We have to be creative and think outside the box – not just the training staff and the medical staff, but also our players. We have to talk to them as well to come up with what's best for Penn State football moving forward." That question – what's best for Penn State football moving forward? – is just one facet of the much larger questions about what's best for the Big Ten, and for college athletics in general. It's unclear whether it will be possible to have a satisfying season under these unprecedented circumstances. Will the Big Ten be able to crown an undisputed champion given the possibility, maybe even the likelihood, that teams will not be playing an equivalent number of games? When the league opted to schedule nine games in nine weeks, it assured itself that games postponed by the pandemic would not be made up. Penn State athletic director Sandy Bar- bour said that teams would not have to forfeit games if they're not able to play, explaining that cancellations would in- stead be considered "non-games." But how will "non-games" impact the divi- sional standings? As of late September, that was unclear. "With an uneven schedule, if somebody plays eight and somebody else plays nine, or somebody plays nine and somebody plays seven, that's not exactly a tiebreaker," Barbour said. "We'll just have to figure out how we'll declare our champion." That's the sort of question that no one in college football has ever had to answer before. And as vexing as it may be, it's not even the biggest question that the conference has to deal with. The biggest question has to do with whether the COVID protocols it has put in place will be sufficient to keep everyone – coaches, players and support staffers – safe and healthy for the duration of the season. When the Big Ten announced that it was going to play this fall, it had to have more than just games to offer. It also had to have a rigorous testing regimen ready to go. To do any less would have invited criticism that the league was merely ca- pitulating to public pressure rather than taking advantage of improvements in testing capacity that had occurred since early August. So beginning Sept. 30, players, coaches and on-field personnel for all 14 Big Ten teams began undergoing daily antigen testing. Anyone who tests posi- tive gets a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm the initial result. If the PCR test is also positive, the player will not be allowed to see game action for at least 21 days and must undergo a battery of cardiac tests. There's also a color-coded system aimed at helping determine when teams should alter their practice routines or consider canceling games. The categories – green, orange and red – are based on the percentage of positive tests on the >> THE NEW NORMAL Franklin said that even though the Big Ten is planning once again to play a fall season, it won't be a normal campaign in any way. "We can't look at anything like how we've done it in the past," he said. Photo by Steve Manuel

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