MADISON, Wis. – After weeks of uncertainty, members of the University of Wisconsin football program know they have a game to prepare for in one month’s time. But as they have seen throughout the first month of college football, nothing is guaranteed.

At least 20 games have been postponed due to players contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus, causing headaches when it comes to postponements and cancelations. The Big Ten won’t have the luxury of the former, not when the conference is trying to play eight regular-season games in eight weeks.

While UW will be testing its football players daily, the people they come into contact outside the program likely won’t have that luxury, a point that head coach Paul Chryst and the staff are trying to make to the players to not let their guard down against the invisible virus.

“We’re testing daily, and that’s not a vaccine,” Chryst told reporters Wednesday. “It just means that you don’t have it and you’re not putting anyone at risk in the facility that day. You have to create your own bubble. The way classes are, most if not all the classes are online, you have to know who you are surrounding yourself with. That’s the ultimate test.”

In mid-August, the NCAA gave players the option to opt out of fall competition without putting their scholarship or team standing at risk. A player also has the ability to make a decision midseason and retain his eligibility if they play in half or fewer of a season’s games before opting out. Chryst said he flipped that narrative with the team.

“We just talked about you’ve got the chance to opt in and if you want to opt in, these are the things you’re going to have to do,” Chryst said. “If you want to play, you have to stay healthy. We’ve had some players get it. Just because they got it doesn’t mean they don’t care about the team. People are getting (COVID-19) in a lot of different ways … You just have to do all you can, and I think this is the one time that we’re truly asking them to be selfish.”

“That’s going to be the battle all year long.”

Wisconsin hasn’t revealed the exact numbers of players who have tested positive for the virus, other than the fact workouts were paused for two weeks due to a campus-wide outbreak. Chryst did reveal that some players had been quarantined three times during the summer for a total of 42 days, which was why the rapid-testing option was pivotal for the Big Ten in starting his season.

From Chryst’s understanding, the daily testing will give the Big Ten the best chance to have games and practices with a clean field.

“The big change for a lot of this was the daily testing becoming available to us," he said. "It changed that possibility of what we could do, especially in a contact sport.”