The White House has now gotten involved in potentially saving the Big Ten football season.
President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday that he had a “very productive” conversation with commissioner Kevin Warren about starting the Big Ten football season and claimed that goal is “on the one yard line!”
The objective of the conference call Tuesday was to discuss the availability of coronavirus testing, according to Austin Ward of Lettermen Row, which is believed to be the biggest hurdle for conducting any sort of season.
The White House may be willing to assist the Big Ten in designating part of its supply of new and cheaper saliva-based testing to the conference, per Ward. The White House purchased 150 million rapid tests from Abbott Laboratories last week.
There are still questions about distribution, but that presumably was part of the call Tuesday.
Trump has been an advocate for the Big Ten to restart its season, which was called off after Big Ten presidents and chancellors in August voted 11-3 to postpone the season for health and safety reasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The dissenting votes were from Nebraska, Iowa and Ohio State, per college football insider Nicole Auerbach.
The Pac-12 also decided to call off its season, while the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and AAC are still continuing with plans for a season.
The decision to postpone the season has sparked a strong reaction from players and parents of players, many of whom have led petitions to restart the season. Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields launched a petition that had more than 300,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning.
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