No. 3 Ohio State’s game at Illinois on Saturday has been canceled because the Buckeyes have had a spike of COVID-19 cases this week, leaving the Big Ten’s best team precariously close to being ineligible to play for the conference title.
The cancellation late Friday came about seven hours after Ohio State announced coach Ryan Day tested positive and wouldn’t travel with the team to Champaign, Illinois.
The team did not fly to Illinois as scheduled Friday night so additional COVID-19 testing could be conducted in Columbus, Ohio. The revised plan was to fly there Saturday morning for a noon ET kickoff.
After returning additional positive tests, Ohio State announced the game was called. The school did not reveal how many members of the program had tested positive as has been its policy all year.
Ohio State paused all activities for the football team.
“We have continued to experience an increase in positive tests over the course of this week,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said in a statement. “The health, safety and well-being of our student-athlete is our main concern, and our decisions on their welfare will continue to be guided by our medical staff.”
This is the second game of the Big Ten season Ohio State has had canceled. The first came after an outbreak at Maryland forced a postponement earlier this month. Despite playing only four games so far, the Buckeyes (4-0) were fourth in the first College Football Playoff rankings released earlier this week.
“We have continued to experience an increase in positive tests over the course of this week. The health, safety and well-being of our student-athlete is our main concern, and our decisions on their welfare will continue to be guided by our medical staff."
Big Ten rules require teams to play at least six game in this abbreviated season to be eligible to play in the conference championship game. The minimum could drop if the average number of games played by all Big Ten teams falls below six (an average above 5.0 will be rounded up to six).
In that case, the minimum number of games required to be eligible for the championship game would be two fewer than the average.
The Big Ten has 18 games remaining, including four Saturday. More than half of those games would have to be canceled for the minimum number of games to qualify for conference championship to drop below six.
Ohio State has only two games remaining on its regular-season schedule: at Michigan State on Dec. 5 and home against Michigan on Dec. 12. The Big Ten championship game is Dec. 19.
The Big Ten started its season the weekend of Oct. 24 and scheduled no open dates for makeups in its eight-week regular-season schedule.
No. 18 Wisconsin already has lost three games after Minnesota canceled earlier this week because of a COVID-19 outbreak. That will leave the Badgers, the Big Ten West favorites, with only five regular-season games at most.
Day is the 19th major-college football coach this year to publicly acknowledge testing positive for the virus, including Alabama’s Nick Saban earlier this week.
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