Will COVID Cancel Wisconsin Game? Maybe.

LINCOLN – What does it take for a Big Ten game to get canceled because of the coronavirus? Nebraska and Wisconsin may be about to find out.
Word leaked out this week about positive COVID-19 tests inside Wisconsin’s football program — specifically with its quarterbacks. The Badger athletic department and coach Paul Chryst declined to comment publicly about specific players. But Chryst said Monday he was confident about the game with Nebraska being played, presumably because of roster size and players available at given positions.
Roster size and position limits would be one factor that could take out a team for up to three weeks, since players have to sit out a minimum of 21 days whether they have symptoms or not. For example, if all five Wisconsin quarterbacks tested positive, the Badgers could meet the Big Ten testing protocol thresholds — we’ll get to those in a minute — but they wouldn’t have any quarterbacks. The same thing could happen to kickers or some other position.
But there are other ways COVID-19 could knock a Big Ten team out of a game without the program necessarily being down for 21 days.
» Meeting the “red/red” threshold limit on the Big Ten testing protocols. That means 5% of the team, on a seven-day rolling average, tested positive for COVID-19, and 7.5% of the team population (coaches, trainers, staff, administrators) tested positive. A minimum seven-day halt is put in place for practice or competition.
According to sources that spoke to Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin’s team is now close to hitting that 5% positivity rate within the team, as of Tuesday afternoon. Sources also said Tuesday afternoon that the entire program roster was asked to take PCR tests, the more accurate nasal swab, to determine what the team’s true positivity rate is today. Those results may well determine the fate of Saturday’s game.
As of Wednesday morning, the Huskers have not been informed of a game cancelation and are preparing to play.