The Big Ten conference is extending its suspension of all organized team activities through June 1 as a response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The conference had previously announced in March it would suspend team activities until May 4, but after evaluating the current climate, the Big Ten has further extended the stoppage. That suspension also includes any on and off-campus recruiting activities as the NCAA has created a dead period for all its member institutions.
As questions continue to rise, Iowa President Bruce Harreld recently conducted a question-and-answer meeting with the Iowa Board of Regents saying he is hopeful that the virus will soon be behind us and is hopeful universities will be able to get back to what they normally do after this June 1 date.
“Our plan of record in the Big Ten is to get back to, we need about six-to-eight weeks of good practice to keep our players safe,” Harreld said. “Once again, I’m sure our coaches would love a lot more time then so that they cane make them winners, but the key issue here is safety. We need six to eight weeks.”
Harreld went on to say he didn’t know if it would be reasonable to allow players to play with no fans, that there would need to be testing of individual players along with other measures.
To help with those decisions, the Big Ten formed a 14-member task force for emerging infectious diseases to provide counsel and sound medical advice to ensure the health, safety and wellness of the Big Ten’s students, coaches, administrators and fans. Representing each conference institution, the task forces is providing input as a resource to the conference to make some of these important decisions about safety in the future.
“These are unprecedented times in our world and the focus of any conversation taking place in college athletics right now is the health, safety and welfare of students and the public,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “We are truly blessed to have a collection of world-class research institutions with the resources and talented medical experts on campus that allowed us to quickly assemble this task force to address a global pandemic. We are thankful to have the Task Force in place moving forward to allow the Big Ten Conference to position itself at the forefront of this issue and to share best practices for the management of and response to emerging infectious diseases now and in the future.”