Press Balls: Ryan Day, Gene Smith and Jim Borchers on Ohio State’s canceled game against Illinois, moving forward

On Friday night, the football team was indefinitely suspended and Saturday’s game in Illinois was canceled due to an increase in COVID-19 cases.

To explain what’s going on, the trio of head coach Ryan Day, athletic director Gene Smith and team doctor Jim Borchers joined the media for a Zoom press conference on Saturday morning.

An overview of their comments:

Ryan day

• “It was a very, very emotional and difficult week for everyone in the program.”

• On the lack of bright spots going into this week, he says he “couldn’t have been more proud of the way our whole organization handled this.”

• “Our goal right now is really to protect everyone.” He says they will soon focus on the state of Michigan.

• Day says players will self-isolate for 10 days and then go through return-to-play protocols, which include heart testing and fitness.

• He says the meetings were made to be virtual this week, and that they didn’t put on helmets or “body to body” the last three days of the week. He says they wore masks the entire time.

• Day said he believes the Buckeyes “could do it” if they were able to return to practice on Thursday.

• He says he has “an extremely heavy heart” with it. “I can’t sit here and tell you it’s anything other than really, really hard.” He says “nothing about it is good,” but that’s going to make those in the program more difficult. “I really believe going through all of this is going to make us stronger.”

Gene Smith

• He says he wants to think of Illinois AD Josh Whitman, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren, FOX partners, and Ohio State President Kristina Johnson.

• “This is our reality. We are fighting as a community to stop the spread of COVID-19.” He says it is difficult to have a “definitive direction” throughout this process.

• Smith says the state of Ohio did not hit the Big Ten threshold that would have required the program to stop, “but the positivity rate was worrying enough where we felt we needed to take a break.”

• He says the state of Ohio has had an “incredible streak” of minimal positive tests.

• Smith says the goal is to put together a plan to “potentially come back for competition next weekend.”

• He thanked Larry Johnson for accepting the interim head coach position.

• Smith says there haven’t been any conversations with the Big Ten to get rid of the six-game minimum required for the Big Ten Championship. “I understand the question. I’m very sensitive to this. But that’s not where we are at. We made the decision last night to do what we did.” Important to note: he says this might crop up in future discussions. Don’t rule it out.

• Smith on what needs to happen for Ohio State to play at Michigan State: “I think we have to keep testing and see that there are more positives happening. We have to make sure that we let’s work with our conference office to make sure they’re ‘confident in what we’re doing.’ He says they need to make sure they’re playing ‘on clean ground’.

• Friday night, Smith says, it became apparent the program needed to be halted.

• He says it’s “a little fluid” when the state of Ohio comes back into the practice area. “There is too much uncertainty.” He mentions that there’s probably a time when they couldn’t compete, but he would defer to Day.

• Asked when the state of Ohio can return to the facility: “We don’t know. The approval treats us. It’s not like we need to get approval from the Big Ten or anyone else else. It’s us. ”

• Smith says he doesn’t think a Big Ten has hit the thresholds to force a shutdown. In the case of the state of Ohio, they see a “community-like spread”.

• On the Illinois game: “Could we have played? Sure. Was that the right thing to play? No.”

• The day: “I just want to thank Ryan. I can’t begin to tell you how hard his job is. I can’t. I think most of you who are with him every week, you do. Got it. But I can. I’m not telling you how hard his job is, especially now. It’s more than describing. ”

Jim borchers

• He says Franklin County “has been grappling” with the increase in positive cases outside group homes, which has challenged the state of Ohio to “maintain the health and safety of our students. -athletes “.

• Borchers says Ohio state football has had “virtually no cases” of COVID-19 until this week.

• Of people who have tested positive: “They are all doing great. They are in their house. He says no one needed further treatment and that they are hopeful those who tested positive will come back.

• Borchers says the state of Ohio has implemented “aggressive contact tracing.”

• “I want to be clear: we never reached a threshold where we couldn’t participate or practice until yesterday afternoon.” He says that “this is something that happened later in the week”.

• He says the state of Ohio only had coronavirus issues on Wednesday. “Certainly not enough to make us think Wednesday”, but enough to put some protocols in place. It was only yesterday, Borchers said, that it became “very clear” that they had to stop the program.

• Borchers said the state of Ohio exceeded the population positivity rate threshold of 7.5% yesterday, but did not exceed the test positivity rate threshold of 5%. If the Buckeyes pass both, they’ll be forced to take a seven day break.

• He says there has been “no pattern” identified among those who have tested positive. No specific job group has been hit harder than others, he says.

• Borchers says the state of Ohio will be driven by the data. “We will try not to predict what this data will be like, because it gives us problems.”

• Borchers said the expectation was that when the programs approached thresholds they would consider safety and consider shutting down, which has happened.

• “I hope we will get our student-athletes back to competition as soon as possible.”