During Tuesday night’s presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Trump repeated a claim that he was responsible for the Big Ten football conference’s decision to resume games this fall. “By the way, I brought back Big Ten football,” Trump said. “It was me, and I’m very happy to do it and the people of Ohio are very proud of me.” Despite his repeated claims, it is not clear what direct impact Trump had on the conference’s decision.
It is true that Trump called Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and discussed the idea of restarting the conference season after they had been public about the season being canceled. But this came several weeks before the decision to return was actually announced. In a direct response to these claims, an anonymous Big Ten president told NBC News, “President Trump had nothing to do with our decision and did not impact the deliberations,” the anonymous president said. “In fact, when his name came up, it was a negative, because no one wanted this to be political.”
