Blue White Illustrated

he Big Ten's medical profession- als were concerned for a reason. Yes, unknowns around the heart condition myocarditis raised seri- ous questions about the conference's ability to play football this fall. And con- tact tracing, largely operated with the help of individual state agencies, created unease. But when the conference convened Aug. 7 for its standing call with its med- ical advisory committee, a major chal- lenge raised red flags to many on the call. Testing for COVID-19 through the summer months had been, for some, an utter disaster. "Turnaround time was absolutely hor- rible. It was just horrible," Dr. Wayne Sebastianelli, Penn State's director of athletic medicine, told the State College Area School District board of directors Aug. 31. "Sometimes it was 18, 19 days before you had a result back. By then your contact tracing, and the effect of the test result, really has no role whatso- ever in what's happening." In effect, this was the Big Ten's dead end. Sebastianelli went on to explain that Penn State's athletic department did its best to alleviate that quandary, expand- ing its partnerships with multiple labs. Still, in a question-and-answer session that drew outsized attention for his comments regarding the uncertainty surrounding myocarditis, Sebastianelli painted a picture of roadblocks that could not be surmounted despite the best efforts and intentions. "The real issue is that we've all tried to get platforms. And some of our institu- tions that have the equipment, we have the equipment, but we don't have the reagents. So it's like having a car lot with no cars on it. And it's just really frustrat- ing," he said. "And what happens at times, too, is that you get the materials [and] the government will come in and take them from you. You may have the ability to test 200 people, and all of a sudden it goes to zero because there's an outbreak somewhere else and they take all your reagent. Or the machine that you've purchased, that was on back- order and you're weeks away from get- ting it, they'll take that machine and ship it to Arizona or Texas. So you lose your ability to test." To be clear, other issues cited in the Big Ten's initial Aug. 11 announcement, and the subsequent open letter from com- missioner Kevin Warren Aug. 19, also helped to create the uncertainty that ul- timately led the conference to postpone all fall sports. At the time, the conference was oper- ating under the assumption that for football to be played, all of the confer- ence's fall nonrevenue sports would also need to play their seasons. That created a massive resource crunch. So, too, did the notion that all of the Big Ten's mem- ber institutions would have to agree to play in order for the conference to stage a fall football season. Those imperatives created a double- whammy in which a consensus was practically impossible. That left seem- ingly everyone – coaches, players, their parents, and certainly fans of every Big Ten football program – feeling dissatis- fied, and with good reason. The confer- ence offered vague responses when pressed to explain what had happened between the Aug. 6 release of the 10- game, conference-only schedule, and the decision to postpone all fall sports. PUT TO THE TEST Improved COVID detection spurs Big Ten's change of heart T JUDGMENT CALL by a touchdown or less, including the past two. When Penn State faced the Hoosiers two years ago, Michael Penix Jr. suffered an ACL injury and had to leave the game. Last year, Penix sat out Indiana's visit to Beaver Stadium due to a season- ending shoulder injury he had re- ceived two weeks earlier against Northwestern. When healthy, Penix has been a very dynamic dual-threat quarterback. This year, he should be in great physical shape for his matchup with Penn State, which means he'll be a difficult player to chase down, especially for a defense that hasn't done much hitting since last December. The Ohio State game looms large, as it always does, but the Lions can't afford to look past their opener. The day after the Big Ten announced its comeback, Franklin was asked if he felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He said that there wasn't much of a feeling of relief, that it felt more like he had exchanged one set of anxieties and concerns for an- other. The league's decision, he said, "took one weight off and put other weights back on." "But I'm thankful and appreciative that we have this opportunity," he added. "And I'm trying to stay open- minded and creative. The frustration comes when you try to make this year like anything you've experi- enced before. It's not. Sometimes it's good for me to talk to other [college] coaches and NFL coaches. We're all dealing with challenges and trying to learn from other conferences and some of the other programs that maybe are further ahead on this learning curve than we are. I think those things have been valuable and helpful for me. But it's obviously been a battle. We're so used to our routine of how the year goes. … For that to be disrupted was challenging. To get some normalcy back is great, but that normalcy has come with a new set of challenges." ■

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