We can officially add Indiana to the growing list of football programs hitting the workout pause button.
As with other schools in the Big Ten, Indiana welcomed back student-athletes, including football players, to campus for voluntary workouts last month. This week, those workouts for the Hoosiers came to a halt. At least, when it came to football it did.
Friday, the school announced that it was suspending football workouts after six players tested positive for the virus. No other sports have been forced to do the same.
“Per the recommendations of the IU Athletics Medical Advisory Group, each positive test results in isolation until further notice and contact tracing measures are established to detect individuals who are considered close contacts, and may have been exposed to the virus,” The school said in a statement. “These close-contact individuals are also quarantined until further notice.”
Indiana football is the latest but certainly not the first impacted by the pandemic. Or the last, more than likely.
In the span of a week, Ohio State , Maryland and North Carolina confirmed they were putting a temporary halt to voluntary workouts because of the results of recent COVID-19 testing among its student-athletes. July 3, Kansas became yet another FBS program to pause voluntary workouts after 12 players tested positive for COVID-19. Earlier in that same week, Arizona announced that it was pausing its phased return of student-athletes to campus. Prior to that, eight individuals connected to the Boise State football program tested positive, forcing the school to temporarily scuttle workouts. June 20, K-State announced that it is pausing all voluntary workouts as well. The reason? “[A] total of 14 student-athletes have tested positive for active COVID-19 following PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing of more than 130 student-athletes.” The weekend before that, Houston decided to put a halt to voluntary on-campus workouts after six symptomatic UH student-athletes tested positive for COVID-19.
All told, at least 10 FBS schools have hit the coronavirus-related pause button.
Other programs had seen a high number of players test positive but continued workouts. Among those are Clemson (37 players tested positive), LSU (30 players quarantined), Texas (13 confirmed positives for football players) and Texas Tech (23 positives for players/staffers).
Oklahoma, meanwhile, is down to zero active cases.