How COVID can still affect the Ohio State Football team

Even though mask mandates are over, COVID can still affect the Ohio State football team. Here’s how that could happen.

The Ohio State football team got hit with COVID late in the season in 2020. They had three games canceled because of COVID in general, even though only one of those cancellations was their fault. The Illinois game was the only one that was because of them. Maryland and TTUN had outbreaks of their own.

The Buckeyes had to deal with that in the National Championship Game too. They were missing a few of their best players because of COVID, including Tommy Togiai. Everyone is hoping that now that it is a new year and new season, that won’t happen for them again.

Unfortunately, there is still a chance that they could get hit with it. Even with vaccinations rates high on the team, the rate isn’t at 100%. Key players can still get knocked out with it. We don’t know which players have gotten vaccinated and which haven’t.

Vaccination rates aren’t the only thing to worry about. The Big Ten still hasn’t come out with some sort of updated COVID guidelines for this year. That means that the team doesn’t know what to do if a vaccinated player tests positive and remains asymptomatic.

If that were to be the case, they could end up having to come up with their own policy. It’s unclear what that policy would be, or how it would be differentiated between vaccinated and unvaccinated cases. Vaccinated cases are extremely rare anyway, so hopefully that doesn’t happen.

It’s been almost two freaking years of dealing with this disease. I’m hopeful that the Buckeyes won’t have to deal with it at all this season and they can just play football. The games should be decided by who is out there playing, not who is out because of COVID protocol.

Only time will tell COVID tries to trip up the Buckeyes again.