Following Tuesday’s announcement of the postponement of Big Ten fall athletics, one word sums up the encompassing feeling within college sports.

Sadness.

“This is an incredibly sad day for our student-athletes, who have worked so hard and been vigilant fighting against this pandemic to get this close to their season,” Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said in Ohio State’s press release Tuesday. “My heart aches for them and their families.”

But Smith urges those to not look down for long, rather, look forward and ahead.

“Spend the night to go through your depression, wake up tomorrow with a new passion and a new focus on how you can attack the day and attack the future because that’s life,” Smith said.

As the Big Ten presidents met to discuss the direction of fall athletics early Tuesday morning, the Ohio State representatives had worked to be united in their stance. It seems there was alignment between the athletic department and Ohio State’s new university president, Kristina Johnson.

“Our president was phenomenal, she challenged everything to try and look at whether a delay was the right thing to do. I couldn’t be more proud of her leadership,” Smith said.

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day spoke on ESPN’s College Football Live just one day prior to the official announcement. He gave one final call for a decision to move forward with the fall schedule out of player safety and demand.

“We cannot cancel the season right now, at the very least postpone it,” Day said. “They feel like they’re safer here in our facility playing football than they would be without it.”

Voice for a delay to the start of a season were strong in order to avoid a complete cancellation or postponement. While the results of the vote regarding the fate of the fall were not announced, perhaps simple deduction from interviews and statements paint a picture on Ohio State's stance.

“We would have ultimately preferred to go to Sept. 26 or Oct. 1 to start a season,” Smith said. “But the science came to us so fast.”

Members of the Buckeyes football roster were a part of the fight to keep the college football season from going anywhere. Just two days prior, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields started the #WeWantToPlay hashtag on social media that many players shared. They also posted a list of demands for the NCAA in effort to institute a safe and fair way to compete.

Player reaction came out on social media following the news of the postponement of the fall season. Fields tweeted “Smh..” and linebacker Baron Browning tweeted a broken heart emoji among a flurry of Buckeyes players and coaches expressing their thoughts on Twitter.

With the fall out of the question, the Big Ten pointed toward the spring as a point in time where fall sports could pick up. However, the effects of a spring season could be challenging, including roster impacts and physical demand of playing two seasons in one calendar year.

Ohio State will have much to alter how it conducts its fall activities, something for which it fought incredibly hard to not have to change.