Just when you thought the traditional Big Ten fall season was lost, they pulled us back in.

In a stunning reversal, the Big Ten Conference has now decided to play football this fall, starting October 23-24.

On August 11th, the Big Ten Conference announced that they would be postponing all fall sports, including football, which generated hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for athletic departments each year.

Leading up to the decision by the Big Ten, players around the conference and country campaigned to play football this fall using the hashtag #LetUsPlay on social media. Following the decision to postpone, parents of Iowa football players, along with parents from Ohio State and Nebraska led the charge to try and get the conference to change their decision, including meeting at the Big Ten offices in suburban Chicago.

Since that point, a group from Nebraska has taken the Big Ten to court seeking relief from the decision made by the conference. Because of that legal filing, the Big Ten said earlier this week that the actual vote, which they had not released, was 11-3 to postpone fall sports in the conference. The three schools voting to continue on were Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio State.

In addition to all this, there were multiple versions of rumors surrounding exactly what the Big Ten might do regarding football. Initially it appeared that perhaps they would opt to play starting sometime in January and Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm released a plan with a later start date in mind. Then this week a proposed starting date of Thanksgiving weekend was floated by coaches and athletic directors.

While all this was has been transpiring, the Iowa football program and Hawkeye athletics has dealt with a Covid-19 outbreak in Iowa City and within their programs. The week before Labor Day they reported 93 new positive Covid-19 cases within the department, including at least 11 within the football program. That led the athletic department to take the step to shut down workouts within each program until after Labor Day.

Now the Hawkeyes will have to regroup in many ways and prepare to play football, perhaps in just over one month. It’s been a long off-season for the Hawkeyes. They were about to go on spring break and then start practice in late March when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. In June, Iowa football dealt with racial issues within the program that resulted in the departure of long time strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle.

Iowa will now be able to focus their attention on football, which should come as a welcome relief to the Hawkeye players and coaches. Stay tuned to HawkeyeReport.com as this story continues to develop.