Big Ten and Pac-12 Should Reconsider Decisions If New Saliva Test Is True Gamechanger

This weekend brought some potentially phenomenal news in the form of a new FDA-approved Covid-19 test that is apparently rapid, inexpensive (about $4 per test), and accurate (it has about 90 percent accuracy, which means you only have a 1 percent margin of error when you test twice). If you're interested in the background information, Zach Lowe details how the NBA and NBPA funded Yale University's work to develop the test. Dan Wetzel details how these tests could be a game-changer, and wonders aloud if the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled their seasons too soon.

Outkick has been banging the drum all week that the Big Ten and their lapdog followers in the Pac-12 acted haphazardly. The Big Ten made their decision to cancel the season about five minutes after they released their schedule. Parents of football players at Iowa, Ohio State, and Penn State have asked Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren to reconsider. A University of Michigan cardiologist essentially says the conference relied on a study that has more holes in it than a 1972 Grateful Dead tour t-shirt.

Kevin Warren's own son is slated to play for Mississippi State this season, and the elder Warren said he felt safe with that decision less than a week before deciding to cancel the Big Ten's season.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been rational throughout this process, postponing the conference's season until late September and acknowledging that he's not certain they'll be able to play football this year but nonetheless holding out that it's also too soon to cancel.

The good news here is that the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled their seasons so soon that it actually isn't too late to reverse course. Their ambitions to play in the Spring (really, Winter) are not rooted in reality. There would be too many games in a calendar year. Flu season will be in full swing. If vaccines are somehow available by then it would be irresponsible to distribute them to young, healthy athletes when so many people are at higher risk of devastating effects from the virus.

If this test is a true game-changer that it seems to have the potential to be, then the Big Ten and Pac-12 should reverse course and un-cancel their seasons.