Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - BREAKING: BIG TEN FOOTBALL IS BACK!

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

BIG TEN FOOTBALL IS BACK! We give you an emergency episode today to cover the breaking news. We are going to break down what this means for the Hawkeyes and the schedule going forward as well as discuss the medical protocols put in place to ensure the safety of these student-athletes. It's exciting day to be an Iowa Hawkeye fan and a Big Ten football fan, so we've got you covered right here.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON,” and you’ll get $10 off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to an emergency episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. That's right, you're getting a bonus episode of the show today. As always, I am your host on the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes. And today's episode, this emergency episode, is brought to you by rockauto.com. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need. And unless you've lived under a rock, you know exactly why we're having this conversation today.

That's exactly why this recording is being posted in the middle of Wednesday afternoon, despite the fact that I already dropped an episode earlier this morning with Arlen Bruce IV and Brody Brecht, two of the recruits in the class of 2021 for the Iowa Hawkeyes. If you haven't checked that out, make sure you do that. But again, two episodes in one day? That is because the Big Ten has officially announced that college football is back in the Big Ten. That is right. We are no longer going to have to worry about our Saturdays and not watching Iowa football. We no longer have to watch Iowa State get slapped all around by the University of Louisiana Lafayette. That's right. We get Iowa football back. We get eight games, including a plus one game, and a plus one game, so nine games total.

So we're going to be going through all of this today on the show. We're going to first talk off, you know, start off by kind of going over what has, what has happened to this point? Where have, you know, where have we gone? How did we get here? Then we're going to talk about what, you know, what is actually going to happen? What is changing? And then we're going to talk a little bit about the schedule. And obviously as these things pop up, we will make sure to continue to cover this right here on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. So first and foremost, how did we get here? How did we get to this point?

Well, the Big Ten decided to switch up the schedule, only do 10, you know, do only conference games, do 10 of those conference games. They came out with a very, very nice looking schedule, really nice graphic, really liked it. And then five days later, they canceled football. They canceled fall sports and said, we're not playing. And then we got nothing from them. Turns out, you know, sounds like, and we've gotten a lot of different ports because there hasn't been a lot of good communication from the big 10. The original vote was 11 to three in favor of postponing fall sports until the spring.

And we've covered that a lot. If you've listened to the show, you know exactly how we felt about that decision and all those items. So pretty bad stuff, pretty bad transparency from the Big Ten, and we've covered that. But now they've decided to reinstate football starting October 23rd weekend. And it sounds like they've done a little bit more due diligence on the medical aspect of it. They've talked to the experts and they put together what I consider a pretty darn good, you know, plan for handling the medical side of it. And I know some people, I've seen some people on Twitter getting pissed off about some of the things, the medical pieces, but I think based on the fact that they did decide to cancel sports

and cancel football for the fall, this was the best, this is one of the best testing programs I've seen, one of the best testing protocols I've seen. And I think they've done a really good job of trying to make sure that if they're going to come back, they're going to do it in the safest way possible because the Big Ten cannot afford to have anything bad happen within the conference, especially after postponing or canceling and then coming back. And after Kevin Warren deciding to get on and talk through why they decided to cancel without saying literally anything. So I think, you know, with that being

said, that's kind of where we're at. That's what's happening. We have college football back. They actually had a interview today with a few of the folks who were responsible or, you know, kind of in charge of, of what was happening with the big 10. I will say this, Kevin Warren continues to not impress me. I don't like the way he's handled this entire situation. I think he's done a piss poor job at best. But that being said, today is a day of happiness. We're excited. We have college football back. So we're going to cover all that. We're going to take a quick break. I know we just started. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to really hop into the meat of our show, covering the medical protocols

and covering what that schedule looks like and what's going to happen going forward. Before we do that, though, we do have a message from our sponsor of the show today. That's right, rockauto.com. If you have not checked out rockauto.com, I highly recommend doing it. I just went there. I needed two filters for my car, a cabin air filter and a regular engine filter. And I went to the chicken, wow, I cannot talk today, brick and mortar store. And I went there and I wanted to get air filters and it was going to cost me $70.

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best part, like I already mentioned, the prices are reliably low. They're the same for professionals and for do-it-yourselfers. It's why I went there. So go to rockauto.com right now and see all the parts available for your car or truck and write locked on in there. How did you hear about us box? So they know we sent you amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need rock auto.com. I, we are back for our second segment of the day. And I know that first one was a little bit quick, but I wanted to make sure we got into the meat of the show and the meat of that is the medical testing and the schedule.

So we're going to start with, with the testing. And I'm going to read kind of a statement from the big tank. I think it's important that I don't really butcher this, but their statement said, The Big Ten will require student-athletes, coaches, trainers, and other individuals that are on the field for all practices and games to undergo daily antigen testing. Test results must be completed and recorded prior to each practice or game student athletes who test positive for the coronavirus through point of contact daily testing would require a polymerase chain reaction or pcr test to come i definitely butchered that poly word to confirm the test result of the poc test then dr jim borchers the head team physician of the ohio state university said everyone associated with the big 10 should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities.

They also said any COVID-19 or all COVID-19 positive student-athletes will have to undergo comprehensive cardiac testing to include labs and biomarkers, ECG, echocardiogram, and cardiac MRIs. cardiogram and cardiac MRIs. Following cardiac evaluation, student athletes must receive clearance from a cardiologist designated by the university for the primary purpose of cardiac clearance for COVID-19 positive student athletes. The earliest a student athlete can return to the game competition is 21 days following a COVID-19 positive diagnosis. So I'm not a doctor. However, I do work in the healthcare field. I will say I'm actually really impressed by this. To me, when you're talking about putting the student athlete's safety first and foremost, that's exactly what they're doing. They're not taking any possible risk.

And I know the CDC has come out and said, if you don't have symptoms, you don't need to be tested. But I think it's still important that we're finding this stuff out. There's still a lot of information we don't know. And so they're really making sure that no matter what, we're putting the student athlete safety first. And the reason why that 21 days is important. And I actually listened to this on the big 10 networks live show today with Dr. Jim Borchers is the fact that with that 21 days, you have that 14 day incubation incubation period where you could have symptoms, that kind of thing. And then the seven days following that

gives you an opportunity to do those tests and also make sure that you are ready to return to competition. Because what we've seen, if you listen to pro athletes that have gotten this, I'm a big Broncos fan. Bon Miller had this, and he definitely said it was tough to get back to my normal self even weeks afterwards. So we don't want athletes to come into a high intensity cardiovascular activity after just having coronavirus, not realizing all of the intricacies with this virus and possibly have some sort of issue because they're trying to come back too quickly. So personally, I'm a big fan of that 21 day mandatory statute. That way we're not having schools that can kind of skate the line to say, I want to get this player back in right now. You want to make sure that these players are safe. One of the other things I thought was really interesting, and it's going to be interesting to see exactly how

they handle this, but each team will designate a chief infection officer who will be in charge of overseeing the collection and reporting of data. So they're going to be, and also going to be handling the positivity rate and the population positivity rate, which is based on a seven day rolling average. So this chief infection officer is going to be really much really in charge of making sure the metrics make sense. And what that means is there are two possibilities here, there's team positivity rate and population positivity rate. And that second one is going to be really interesting. Because of some of the states that are currently where these colleges reside. I'm looking at Iowa, for example, Wisconsin. Some of these states are struggling with the coronavirus pandemic.

So the second one is going to be very interesting once I get to the next piece of this. But they are judging team positivity rate, which is the number of positive tests divided by total number of tests administered. If you're in the green, that means you have zero to 2%, two to 5% is orange and anything over 5% is red. As far as the population positivity rate, which is the number of positive individuals divided by total population at risk, green is zero to 3.5%, orange is 3.5 to seven and a half percent. And red is greater than seven and a half percent. And these metrics are going to impact the ability to practice and compete. So if you have a green, green or a green orange, that means you're good positivity rate from a team perspective and orange in terms of population. The team can continue with normal practice and competition. If you are orange, orange, or orange red, that means the population is at a red and

the rest of your team is at an orange. The team must proceed with caution and enhance COVID-19 prevention. That means alter practice and meeting schedules, consider viability of continuing with scheduled competition. So that is where you start having that discussion of whether or not we can do some of these things. And then red, red. So both your team is above 5% and the population is above seven and a half percent. The team must stop regular practice and competition for a minimum of seven days and reassess metrics until improved. So I love the fact that they're putting guardrails in place. There's they're taking out a lot of that gray area and making it very black and white about what is allowed and what are we allowed to do. the fact that they're putting guardrails in place. They're taking out a lot of that gray area

and making it very black and white about what is allowed and what are we allowed to do. And I think, again, I don't agree with the Big Ten's lack of transparency. I didn't necessarily say I didn't agree with their decision to postpone or cancel. I do think they should have just postponed and not canceled, but neither here nor there now. But I do really appreciate the stuff they're putting in, the accountability they're putting in to make sure that these student athletes are in a safe environment continuously throughout

their journey in college football. So that to me is great to see. We've already seen it in college football. If you listen to the Lockdown College Football Podcast, I co-host that every Wednesday with Josh Ward of Lockdown Volunteers. We talked a bit about this as well, that college football is going to be impacted throughout the season. There's going to be teams that can't field a team because they have too many positive tests. There's going to be teams that can't field specific position groups. Well, some of that

variability is being taken out, or unpredictability, I should say, is being taken out because we're going to be able to see this real time with the Big Ten because they're doing that on a seven-day rolling average, being able to monitor those results. So I'm impressed by what the Big Ten was able to produce today. Again, not impressed with what they've done up to this point, but great news that we are getting Big Ten football back. And I do like how they're at least trying to go about this from an infection standpoint. So we're going to take a quick break. Enough medical talk right now on the show. This is a happy day.

We want to get into some of the happier things, such as the scheduling and what this means for other sports and kind of going forward. So we're going to be covering that on segment number three of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast coming up in just a few short seconds. We are back for our third and our final segment of our bonus and emergency episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. That means we're not having an episode tomorrow morning, but you get this to listen to. And then we'll be back on Friday with a pretty special interview.

I do have Kevin Casper, former Iowa Hawkeye and NFL receiver. He's going to be joining the show on Friday and Monday to go through kind of the conversation we had. It was a great discussion. I think you all are going to enjoy that. But for now, let's get to Big Ten football because they have announced what is happening with the schedule. It is going to begin October 23rd, 24th weekend. And they are going to play an eight-game schedule followed by a season end of, sorry, a seeded end of season championship. As far as student athletes go, they are able to start practice immediately. And a lot of schools

are already doing this, but they're kind of trying to figure out what that hours looks like. And they're looking to release the actual schedule by the end of this week. So they haven't announced that part yet. They just announced what the plan is. So two things I want to focus on the eight game schedule that gives them an opportunity to conclude before college ball playoff committee convenes and determines who the four teams playing in the college ball playoff will be. And I love, I absolutely love the idea of a end of season seated championship. Honestly, depending on how this goes, I think that'd be pretty sweet to see. Anyways, there's always that back and forth of the East is better than the West. You always hear about that because Ohio State and Penn State have been pretty strong and Michigan has been

pretty strong as well. But I would love to see a season or end of season seeded championship. So we're going to get the one seed versus the one seed going against each other. Two versus two, three versus three, four versus four. This is really a cool opportunity to see how these divisions align and really put pen to the paper and say, this division is better or this division is worse, what have you. So pretty exciting stuff. We're going to start seeing, obviously, schools come out with their plans are for a practice perspective. Testing for this, they want to do this rapid antigen test and they want to be able to do a daily testing. That's going to be available starting September 30th. So there's still a little bit of a grace period there. But the fact that we have football starting October 23rd

weekend is absolutely fantastic. And as we get that schedule, we'll make sure to break that down as well, likely on an episode next week. A couple other things though. Now that this has happened, what is going to change? It sounds like from a fall sports perspective outside of football, first and foremost, we wanted to make sure we got the football season back. But from a fall sports perspective, most of those sports have had their championships pushed back to the spring. So it doesn't make a ton of sense to try to really push those teams to get started now. They can always play in the spring. They can maybe do some exhibition games to get kind of warmed up, but we'll see a lot of that happen in the spring.

So it's going to be a very spring or very busy spring from a big 10 and Iowa Hawkeye perspective. You know, what does this mean for some of these sports that were cut? I think this is, this bodes in favor of those sports that were cut, you know, gymnastics,

swimming and tennis. This bodes well for them, maybe having an opportunity to play again. It'd be interesting to see what the predicted budget deficit is going to be now that we do have college football happening this fall. It looks like we're going to get, you know, we're supposed to get an announcement on the NCAA basketball stuff happening later today as well. So it'll be really interesting to see how that impacts the budget deficit and what that means from some of those sports that are getting cut that, you know, clearly a lot of boosters, a lot of people are very upset about. So I would love

to see those programs come back if that can happen. That sounds awesome. Also, what does it mean for players opting in or opting out? It sounds like Iowa is only being impacted. There is one player on the defensive side of the ball that, you know, there's one player. I should just say the one player is opting out. We're not sure who that is yet. Definitely more to come on that. But there's a lot of players across the Big Ten where they have opted out. Could they opt back in?

Rondell Moore, for example. Rashad Bateman at Minnesota. Micah Parsons already signed an agent, but we'll see if the NCAA gets a little bit lenient on that. What about Sean Wade, Ohio State? There's a couple different players that have opted out. Could they opt back in? We will definitely see on that, and we'll get more information on that as it kind of happens.

But the big thing to take away is that Big Ten football is back. Iowa football is back. I hope this trends in the right direction. That schedule doesn't give a lot of wiggle room in case a team has to miss a game. So it'll be interesting to see if they decide to front load that schedule. And the reason why is what happens if Ohio state and Michigan are scheduled at the end of the year? What happens if a Iowa, Wisconsin are competing for that, you know, division title, that West comfort, the West title, and they are scheduled at the end of the year and Wisconsin goes out or Iowa goes out and is unable to play that game because of too many

positive coronavirus tests. Um, that would be terrible to see. So I would love to see the big 10 try to front load that rivalry schedule as much as possible, or at least put it in the middle. Um, but that, you know, that kind of, that can be a little bit tricky to do, but I think that's one of those things, one of those those things I'm kind of interested in because the Big Ten did not give themselves any wiggle room in case there are games that get postponed, in case there are games that get canceled outright. So we could definitely see teams finish the season only playing five or six games.

But nevertheless, playing five or six games in the fall is better than trying to do two seasons in the spring. It's better for these seniors who are looking to play in the NFL next year. It's better for these draft eligible juniors that are looking to play in the NFL this year. It's better all around to have fall football. And I'm excited to get the Big Ten back and to get Iowa Hawkeye football back.

I hope you all are too. I hope that's why you're tuning in today. Just a reminder that we have a daily episode and we'll be back on Friday morning with our interview with Kevin Casper. So stay tuned for that. And as always, if you like the show, subscribe wherever you downloaded it. Give us that five-star review.

Let your friends know about us as well. And follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And if you haven't checked out our interview with Arlen Bruce and Brody Brecht from this morning, make sure to do that as well. Again, thank you all for tuning in as we've dealt with this saga of the Big Ten over the last month. I appreciate you all listening into the show. And as always, Hawkeye Nation, let's go Hawks and let's play some darn football.