COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio State Buckeyes were able to get one week of spring practice in before the world changes and athletics on the whole became an afterthought as a result of a worldwide scare over the COVID-19 virus and business as usual would become a thing of the past and the world of sports would be put on hiatus for an undetermined length of time.

There is not a part of society where this does not reach out to but just from a football aspect, this is a great period of the unknown as the Big Ten announced earlier today that all organized team events, which obviously includes spring football practice, would be suspended until at least April 6th.

The original plan at Ohio State was to have the annual spring game on the 11th of April, something that was canceled earlier this week. Now with the cancellation of spring football, at least up until that date, there are a lot of questions to answer in a situation that seems to change hour-by-hour.

For Ohio State Athletics Director Gene Smith, he would have just rather seen spring practice done away with for this year and address something down the line once things become clearer.

“I was of the opinion, just like a few other colleagues, that it should have been eliminated,” Smith said on a media teleconference on Friday afternoon. “The decision was made to suspend, and I support that. We will see how this rolls and somewhere along the line we will have to make a decision we will have to make a decision that there will be no more organized team activities or there will be.”

Many leagues followed suit along with the Big Ten while other leagues did not move as quickly with some spring practices occurring as recent as Friday morning.

Once this initial date of the 6th is reached, there is not a lot of time beyond that and the end of the academic term to squeeze in a full allotment of practices and Smith admits that he has not gotten that far yet as he tries to maneuver his school through all of this.

“I have not even looked… we had our spring game that was scheduled on the 11th, so I guess technically we would be able to get like five or six practices, I have no clue and have not thought that far,” Smith said. “The decision was to allow for us to kind of evaluate it as things go on.”

Speaking of trying to keep everything balanced, the NCAA did step in and announce that recruiting in all sports would go full-stop, at least in terms of a dead period being put into place effective immediately and running through mid-April, at least the 15th.

The Buckeyes came out ahead of many programs and pulled its coaches from going on the road and suspended all visits to campus. That was not an easy decision to come to but one that ended up proving to be the correct one. Now everyone will have to abide by the same rules and no program will be able to get a leg-up by going against the majority.

“I was really glad the NCAA came out and put in place a national dead period because we were out by ourselves, so they put in a national dead period so from a competitive equity point of view that was important,” Smith said in regard to recruiting. “We will figure out what we need to do as we move forward.”

Of course for the football-starved fans of the Buckeyes, everyone wants to know what six months will look like. That would get everyone into September and into the heat of football season. Is there any chance that we could be looking at a landscape with an interruption of that season?

“I have not thought that far,” Smith said. “We are dealing with today. We are trying to adhere to the institutional policies and requests. We have issues on the ground floor today that we are trying to deal with. We have had two conference calls with all of our head coaches, we will have another on Monday. We are trying to help them as they are dealing with the issues. So, we just have a million other things that we are thinking about.”

Facilities are closed and there will be a small window of time for athletes to come in and clear out their lockers. The university is already going through extensive steps to clean facilities and eradicate any potential viruses that could be in place, a ‘disease-bomb’ as Smith put it on the call.

That of course means that athletes will not be able to even work out in these facilities during this ban and will be left to their own to stay in athletic shape while they are away from the watchful eyes of their coaches.

“We do have a very mature players, they know how to work out on their own, they know the proper training techniques,” Smith said. “I think at the end of the day we will be able to get our guys back up on track and be competitive in the fall.”

For head coach Ryan Day, it has been quite the career for him with just 17 games as a head coach on this level. His first three game under difficult circumstances in stepping in for a suspended Urban Meyer. He would then go 13-1 in his first full season as head coach with the team and now has to contend with something that is unimaginable as the world is being turned upside down.

Smith said there will be a time and place to sit down with Day and his staff to roadmap what is on the horizon but with the fluid nature of what is going on currently and the pre-planned separation between the coaches and team while the student body is still technically on spring break, that will come down the line.

And football is just one of many sports that Smith is over. 27 different sports at Ohio State came to an abrupt end as regular seasons and postseasons all came to a halt either at the conference or NCAA level as a result of the outbreak.

There will be plenty more work to do as everyone goes deeper into the unknown.