Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez spoke with media members Wednesday morning to discuss the Big Ten's return to the football field.

Here are four takeaways from that virtual conversation.

It is officially official.

After a month of rumors and turmoil across the Big Ten, football will return in late October. The final piece to the football puzzle is a conference schedule, which is close to being finalized.

Athletic Director Barry Alvarez addressed that Wednesday, noting the two crossover games still have to be figured out. When the official schedule does come out, expect a very different look from any other season.

The Big Ten, starting the weekend of Oct. 23, will play eight regular season games, along with a conference title game and six consolation games. The eight weeks of regular season competition will not include a bye week. The original schedule released in August included two byes.

“We presented four different schedules and one had an open date that would have been starting on the 17th and would have had a bye date somewhere, but our COPC suggested that another week may answer more questions and allow us to be prepared better,” Alvarez said. “This schedule did not have a bye date, so we can complete our schedule in time to be involved in the college football playoff as well as our bowl games.”

The opening date implies some games will be played in a primetime slate on Friday. The season may even have some Monday games as well.

“FOX has been a very good partner in all of this as we presented the schedules. We’ve had quite a few schedules presented to us and we went through them with FOX and they took a look and were advisors as far as which made more sense for them,” Alvarez said. “They asked that we have flexibility in our scheduling as far as playing on a Friday, primetime, maybe even on a Monday, but we agreed that we would be flexible in our scheduling.”

With football returning, some wondered if players would be put in an NBA-like bubble, especially with positive numbers rising in Madison. That won’t be the case.

“We have constant discussions with our athletes about responsibility," Alvarez said. "We’ve tried to take it a step further and ask them to be leaders on campus and in the community where they can send a safe message and help improve our situation here in Madison, and particularly, on campus,”

Student athletes and coaches will be required to undergo daily testing, and those who have a positive test result will have to take a PCR test to confirm. Each school will have a medical professional to collect and report data for the Big Ten.

The process for athletes who previously tested positive to return to the field will be quite extensive. They will undergo comprehensive cardiac testing and then receive clearance from a cardiologist. A student athlete won’t be able to return for at least 21 days following their positive test.

As for a team-wide outbreak, there still isn't a protocol set for the threshold to postpone or cancel a game and whether or not a team would be forced to forfeit. Alvarez made sure to add that the protocol would be league-wide and not on a team-by-team basis.

With the Big Ten being one of only two conferences not to kick off on time, commissioner Kevin Warren and the league came under fire for their handling of the season.

“The decisions were made for the right reasons. The postponement was made for the right reasons - for the safety of our student athletes. Our chancellors and presidents acted prudently. They made the right decisions at the time,” Alvarez said. “They were open-minded enough to sit back and look at the solutions and look at the answers to the questions that they had and, quite frankly, the questions that were out there, without them being answered, there’s no way we can put our student athletes back on the field.

"But now we have answers. The testing is an answer. We have answers to the heart situation, protocol, contact-tracing is answered. In the end that’s the reason we moved forward because the safety questions were answered, the health questions were answered.”

The main concerns for the Big Ten included testing and the persisting threat of potential heart issues.

In terms of bringing football back to Wisconsin amid growing positive cases on campus, Alvarez noted encouraging numbers within the athletic department.

“Obviously it concerns all of us, it definitely concerns me, but the campus doesn’t afford the fact that they’re going to test daily,” he said. “Quite frankly, for the past month, as far as practicing, as far as working out, anything that has happened within our facilities, our practice sites, we’ve been able to control. Now as we move forward in daily testing I think that makes me feel very much at ease.”

The Badger faithful will see the return of Wisconsin football but will be confined to jumping around from their homes.

Alvarez and the Big Ten confirmed that fans won’t be allowed at Camp Randall this season. Only family of players and staff will be permitted in the stands for games in Madison.