Here's What Purdue AD Mike Bobinski Said After Jeff Brohm's Positive COVID-19 Tests

Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinksi didn't want to see the football season start this way without his head coach, Jeff Brohm, but that's the reality these days after Brohm tested positive for COVID-19.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – One of the prerequisites of the Big Ten bringing back football this fall was the ability to do daily antigen testing for everyone involved on all 14 campuses. That testing did its job Sunday, when Purdue coach Jeff Brohm tested positive.

A more detailed COVID-19 later in the day confirmed the positive result and Brohm, who said Monday that he was feeling symptoms, is now at home in isolation. He will not be able to coach Saturday's home opener against Iowa.

Brohm and Purdue athletic director Mike Bobinski met with the media on Monday for lengthy interviews. 

• You can read Brohm's entire interview here (CLICK HERE).

Here's what Bobinski said:

MIKE BOBINSKI: First of all, thanks for joining us. I presume we probably have a few more folks than is typical here, but that's this year. That's the way things sort of are.

The events of the last day and a half or so now are not at all what we had hoped for, but I think indicative of the fact that this year is not a linear progression for anybody. It's a year that flexibility and adjustment and adaptability is sort of what it takes in order to get through things, and we've seen that around the country, and now we're in it ourselves here.

First and foremost, I want to express our concern, as it should be and as it will be throughout here, is making sure that Coach Brohm and any other of our staff members or students athletes or others associated in and around our program that have the unfortunate reality of coming down with the virus, that they take care of their health, their safety, their well-being first and foremost, and that will be the first priority. Everything else honestly is secondary to that.

Regarding where things are in an overall sense, we began the daily testing program adopted by the Big Ten on September 30th with daily antigen testing, which is really a surveillance type program, and then to be followed up by a confirmatory PCR test in the event anybody tests positive.

I think the program and the system in general has been really, really well-executed. We appreciate very much Quidel, Biodesix, everybody that's part of our local staff here has done a great job with the testing, and we feel really, really confident in the approach and what's getting done. We also feel really confident in our approach on a day-to-day basis as to how we're trying to be safe.

But nevertheless I think this just indicates how uncertain this circumstance is for all of us, the fact that the virus finds its way to where it finds itself, in ways that you can't predict and you sometimes can't fully protect against. So here we sit.

But again, beginning on September 30th we've done our daily testing and had, to this point, very favorable results, and without getting into things that we can't or shouldn't share publicly, just for purposes of letting folks know, we have had zero student-athlete positives through that entire period of time. No one has -- none of our athletes have had a positive antigen test to this point, and that's a really, really good thing, and that's a testament to the daily protocols and the attention to detail and the cautious way that they're going about doing their business, both in our facilities and away from our facilities. That's not to be taken for granted these days, and we appreciate that. There's no guarantee that that will be the season-long condition, but it's our current condition, and we're hopeful that we stay there.

• Q. What are the kind of concerns when it comes to the false positives, especially late in the week and on the eve of the game? This is maybe for Mike and for Jeff. Is there a desire at all to eliminate some of those game day testing or the Friday testing to -- I guess what's kind of your concerns possibly with late week false positives?

MIKE BOBINSKI: I would just second what Jeff relayed. We understand the protocol and the system that's in place. I think on game day if you have a positive test on game day, that's just the way it's going to be this year, but to Jeff's point, we have had zero false positives within our football daily testing regimen since September 30th. Any positive that we have had has been confirmed by a PCR test, and so we feel we're very confident in the system and the protocol and believe that it will get us the right results. At the end of the day we don't want to put anybody out there that's positive, and as Jeff mentioned, I think erring on the side of safety at this point is the right way to go.

• Q. Mike, first of all, have you had any conversations with the Big Ten regarding Jeff's situation? And what are you hearing back from the league regarding this game? Is there any discussion that the game could get canceled if some other things do happen?

MIKE BOBINSKI: At this point, there's been no conversation about potential cancellation of the game. Obviously not ideal to not have Jeff as our head coach available, but that has not been something that triggers a game cancellation or even remotely have we approached that topic. On our daily Big Ten call this morning, I did let everyone know in a way that I could share sort of where things were with Jeff and what our approach was, and we continue to follow the protocol as it's outlined and we will do so. Obviously if there are any ways to allow Jeff to participate in the coaching of the game on Saturday from a remote perspective, if that is somehow, some way permissible, technology-wise or otherwise, we will explore that in every way possible, but at this point there is no definitive determination on that.

• Q. Mike, you mentioned earlier that there were no positive cases among student-athletes, so does that mean all the active cases that are listed in the weekly updates are all staff members and coaches? Also, what athletes are actually getting the day-to-day testing? Is it just football and basketball? Is it all fall athletes, or is it every single athlete?

MIKE BOBINSKI: Well, the daily reports cut across all of our -- the weekly reports cut across all of our sports. They are not highlighted by sport, so those are aggregate numbers, so there's a smattering of different -- whether it be student-athletes and/or staff and/or student managers and others. There's a variety of folks that are wrapped up in that, and we don't specifically identify, nor will we. I did mention earlier that we've had zero football student-athletes test positive when we began the daily testing. That continues to be the case, so that is -- that's where we are with that. I'm sorry, I missed the second part of your question.

• Q. I was just wondering, is it just basketball and football getting these day-to-day tests or is it everybody?

MIKE BOBINSKI: Yeah. Right now it is just football that's in the daily antigen testing. The two basketballs, men's and women's basketball, will begin no later than early next week. We believe that the additional equipment and testing kits to support basketball should arrive here this week, and then we'll -- we and all the other Big Ten schools will begin testing our basketball programs as soon as everything is in place and ready to go, but that's probably about a week away.

Transcript provided by Purdue University Athletics.