Five Burning Questions Ahead Of Upcoming Big Ten Decisions

Announcements from the Big Ten conference, regarding the football season, are coming soon. Three of the five power conferences (ACC, Pac-12, SEC) have released unique, shortened schedules for the fall season as those in the sport hold their collective breath, hoping for a full season of competition this fall.

The Big Ten is set to make a number of decisions in the coming days and weeks, starting with announcing a set conference-wide medical policies and protocols before Wednesday, followed by the date of when football teams will be allowed to begin fall camp (which was originally scheduled to start Aug. 7). Following that, the conference-only schedule is expected to be announced this month.

Here's five burning questions surrounding Michigan football and the Big Ten ahead of these upcoming announcements.

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We've seen several teams in the conference pause voluntary workouts after tests came back positive, with the most notable being Michigan State and Rutgers, who quarantined their teams amid outbreaks.

The big question is what the threshold will be for positive tests when it comes to pausing fall camp or forfeiting / postponing a game.

In terms of contact tracing, the Power 5 and NCAA have already drafted up legislation that says those who test positive for the coronavirus must isolate for at least 10 days from their onset of symptoms/positive test and until they’ve gone at least three days without symptoms. And, those found to have contact with the person who tested positive must miss two full weeks even if they test negative for the virus.

Will the Big Ten have more stringent rules for its institutions than what has already been put in place? And how will teams separate players on the practice field so that one positive test doesn't mean dozens of other players who were in close contact have to miss two weeks?

Those are the questions that commissioner Kevin Warren and his staff are tasked with answering, and it all remains to be seen what they'll come up with.

We already know that the Big Ten is still unsure about fall camp starting this Friday as it gathers information and weighs decisions on what the medical policies will be.

Other leagues in the Power 5 have delayed the original week one start date, which was originally scheduled for Sept. 5. The ACC will begin the week of Sept. 7-12, while the Pac-12 and SEC are both set to commence the season on Sept. 26. The Big 12 has seen Kansas and Oklahoma schedule games for week zero (Aug. 29), though those still may not take place this month, with more clarity coming when the conference makes its own scheduling decisions.

Though it's yet to be officially decided, the rumblings are that the Big Ten will likely join the ACC, Pac-12 and SEC in delaying the start of the season, as reported by The Wolverine's John Borton. That would give the league flexibility, especially if it moves its championship game back into December and has designated off weeks for games that need to be rescheduled.

Each team was originally scheduled to play nine conference opponents, and most assume those nine would remain in-tact, while the league adds another Big Ten opponent for each to make it an even 10. But who would Michigan and other teams add to their schedules? That's one of the main unknowns regarding the schedule at this point, especially since the unbalanced schedule that goes along with 14 teams being league members has undoubtedly been a factor in who wins the Big Ten title some years.

Even when the schedule is released, we may not know the dates of each game, either, as we've seen with the aforementioned conferences. The order in which a squad plays its opponents has an impact on how successful that team will be, so it's certainly something to watch going forward.

There have been reports that the Big Ten will front-load the schedule and place a priority on playing divisional contests earlier on in the season. This would make sure the games most important to the division races are played and there would be time to have them made up if they got cancelled. Additionally, if the season gets cancelled mid-way through, there's a higher chance those more important games, including rivalries, get played.

Speaking of rivalries, Michigan-Ohio State may not be played on the final day of the regular season in 2020. That would be the first time U-M wouldn't play the Buckeyes in the Wolverines' final regular-season game since 1998, and just the fourth time that oddity would occur since the onset of the rivalry in 1897.

The positive is that, again, there is a higher chance the game is played — something that would be missed greatly by not just U-M and Ohio State fans, but college football fans in general — and that it could be made up if it did, in fact, get postponed earlier on in the year.

A negative to this scenario is that tradition would be broken. And on top of that, the teams would not go through the rest of the regular-season slate building toward playing their most-hated rival. But in 2020, it almost seems par for the course that the Wolverines and Buckeyes won't play each other to conclude the season.

However, most, if not all fans would take the consolation of the game being played at some point over not at all.

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