“I can tell you that when you’re preparing for a team, there’s really just not a lot of time in your day to be dealing with these kind of things so I leave that up to the conference and to (Ohio State director of athletics Gene Smith and University President Kristina Johnson) to have those conversations.”
When the league announced in September it was going to play football this fall, it did so with a strict daily testing regimen made possible by advances in daily rapid tests.
At that time, the league said if more than five percent of the team and 7.5 percent of the team population (including coaches, trainers and other personnel with the team) tested positive in a seven-day rolling average, the team would be idled for seven days.
If one of those benchmarks was reached but not the other, the team was to be allowed to proceed with caution in both practice and competition.
On Wednesday, Maryland announced eight players had tested positive over the past seven days but did not provide information about how many others in the team environment had tested positive (if any).
Ohio State has not published any testing results since the school brought players back for voluntary workouts in June, but Maryland announced having 10 athletes (across all sports) test positive between Sept. 30 and Nov. 10.
“I know they were all on the phone having all these types of conversations, all the questions you asked,” Day said. "To be honest with you, right now it’s like it’s all about football for me.
“So we were involved in this stuff going into the season, and that was kind of an everyday thing. Now it’s like how do you (go from getting) ready for Maryland and now Indiana, so I’m kind of just leaving that up to them and letting them work with it because there are just not enough hours in the day right now — but I hear what you’re saying. I totally hear what you’re saying, and I think you’ve got a valid point.”
Ohio State is scheduled to next play a week from Saturday when Big Ten East co-leader Indiana comes to Columbus for a noon start.
The Hoosiers play at Michigan State this Saturday.
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