Ohio State wants to play in October, could it possibly happen?

When Saturday comes around, the 2020 college football season will officially be underway — Yes, we aren't really counting BYU's 55-3 blowout over Navy on Labor Day as the start of the season.

College Football Playoff hopefuls No. 10 Notre Dame and No. 1 Clemson begin their season against Duke and Wake Forest, respectively. Other notable teams kicking off on Saturday include No. 5 Oklahoma, No. 14 Texas and No. 18 North Carolina.

Altogether, 19 games will take place on Saturday — the SEC won't be beginning its season until Sept. 26.

But there are quite a few teams who won't be playing on Saturday, or at all this fall. The Big Ten and the Pac-12 have held firm to the idea that they won't be playing college football this fall, with potential start times coming around Thanksgiving or Jan. 1.

“Right now, I’ve got a high degree of confidence that we’ll be playing in January,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott told Dan Patrick on his show. “It’s possible because of this announcement that we could play sooner. I think the significance of yesterday’s announcement, having access to this testing, I can look you in the eye virtually and tell you that I have a high degree of confidence we’re playing, just on a postponed base. We are going to have a full and exciting season for our student-athletes. I shouldn’t say full as in playing 12 games, I think it will be abbreviated like it is in other conferences. What’s now also a possibility is that we could start earlier than January but that’s going to depend on some things outside of our control.”

While Pac-12 coaches have been mostly silent regarding the postponement of the season, the Big Ten coaches have taken a different approach.

After Penn State head football coach James Franklin made comments Thursday morning regarding his disappointment with the Big Ten Conference, and its handling of recent events, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day added similar thoughts of his own.

pic.twitter.com/H3aA2dAmuN
— Ryan Day (@ryandaytime) September 10, 2020

“While I understand the Big Ten Conference’s decision to postpone the football season because of the health and safety considerations, the communication of information from the Big Ten following the decision has been disappointing and often unclear. However, we still have an opportunity to give our young men what they have worked so hard for: a chance to safely compete for a national championship this fall…

“I couldn’t possibly be prouder of how this team, our medical personnel, athletic director and president have stayed together and managed through this extremely difficult time with so many unanswered questions. The Big Ten medical subcommittee has done an excellent job of creative a safe pathway toward returning to play in mid-October…

“These young men and their parents have asked so many questions that I do not have the answer to, but the one that hurts the most is ‘why can these other teams and players play and we can’t?’ Duke is playing Notre Dame, and Clemson is playing Wake Forest this weekend…

“Our players want to know: why can’t they play?”

Day makes a very good point — Although at this point in time the Pac-12 would have a better chance at resuming play based on its recent partnership with Quidel Corporation, a diagnostic company with rapid COVID-19 testing that can produce results in 15 minutes.

“This is a major step toward the safe resumption of Pac-12 sport competitions,” Scott said in a released statement. “The availability of a reliable test that can be administered daily, with almost immediate results, addresses one of the key concerns that was expressed by our medical advisory committee, as well as by student-athletes, coaches and others.”

What's currently holding the Pac-12 back are the state governments from Oregon and California who haven't formally approved of the resumption of activities.

As of now, half of the Pac-12 (Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, UCLA and USC) and still not cleared for contact practices — although professional sporting teams in the state have not only resumed practices, but have resumed playing or will start playing within the next week.

“This isn’t unfortunately our only challenge," Scott said. "We have six schools currently, the four California schools (USC, UCLA, Stanford, Cal) and two of our Oregon schools (Oregon and Oregon State) that currently don’t have government approvals to have contact practices. I know the approval has been given for pro sports but not for college sports. We’ll need some help from the counties, public health officials to bless this and say it’s okay.

“Now what I think what we announced yesterday (Thursday) will be an important piece of that. I think the public health officials are keenly interested of what our plans and protocols are so I am hopeful that we will get what we need,” Scott added.

The conference has repeatedly said that they need a full six weeks of practice time before they can return to an original season. So a legitimate time frame with testing beginning at the end of September would mean that a season could begin around Halloween or the week afterwards.

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