Indiana, Purdue Both Pausing Team Activities

Tuesday's news that Ohio State-Michigan had been cancelled was met with incredible disappointment. But in a twisted way, perhaps Michigan actually helped Ohio State by cancelling the game early enough in the week that there is still time to come up with an alternative plan.

Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, those other options seem to be dwindling fast.

First of all, no other game in the conference has been cancelled yet. That means there's no other team that the Scarlet and Gray could play against ... yet. It was announced earlier in the day on Tuesday that Purdue was pausing team activities to look further into their spiking cases and determine if it was safe for them to continue. The Boilermakers are scheduled to play Indiana on Saturday.

What's Next for Ohio State Football with No Michigan Game?

Would that league consider having Ohio State play Indiana again? It's the Hoosiers only loss of the season and they are the only two teams that could qualify for a Big Ten championship game appearance. It's hard to imagine that scenario happening because a potential Indiana win only makes the waters murkier.

Now it's even less likely.

Tuesday evening, Indiana announced it was also pausing team activities because of a spike in CoVID-19 cases.

Suffice it to say, rivalry week in the Big Ten is off to a bad start.

Pete Thamel from Yahoo! Sports is reporting that the no team in the Big Ten has been asked to switch games this week, like perhaps Rutgers and Maryland playing someone else this week.

Multiple sources told Yahoo Sports that no Big Ten programs have been asked to move games. There’d be a resistance to switch games mid-week after 3 full days of prep and practice. “I can’t see any team agreeing to change an opponent with 2 days left to prep,” said a B10 source.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 8, 2020

With the Purdue-Indiana game in serious jeopardy, and with the increasing likelihood that the other Big Ten teams are not going to be asked to switch opponents, I think it's looking more and more likely that the Buckeyes won't have a game on Saturday.

And as I wrote earlier, I still think the conference is going to change its own arbitrary rules and put the Buckeyes into the conference title game next week against Northwestern.

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