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Ohio State Buckeyes celebrate after a win against the Wisconsin Badgers in the Big Ten Football Championship.
Joe Robbins/Getty Images
The Big Ten is going to play football after all.
On August 11, the Big Ten announced it is pushing football and other fall sports to the spring due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the conference changed course Wednesday.
The Big Ten said its Council of Presidents and Chancellors voted unanimously Tuesday to restart sports. The emergence of daily rapid-response COVID-19 testing, not available when university presidents and chancellors decided to pull the plug on the season, helped trigger a re-vote.
The new season will begin on the weekend of October 24. Each university will have an abbreviated eight-game schedule.
Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said during a press conference on Wednesday, the conference “went to work to establish our Big Ten return to competition task force.”
President Donald Trump for weeks has been campaigning for the Big Ten to play its football season. Trump had previously spoken to Commissioner Warren, but it’s unclear what role the president had in the conference’s decision to play football this fall.
The conference is home to a number of battleground states in the November election, mostly in the Midwest.
The Pac-12 is the only remaining major conference that will not be playing football in the fall. However, there have been reports that there’s some momentum for a “mid-to-late November” return for the Pac-12, according to ESPN.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
