Six weeks after announcing plans to postpone football for the fall, the Big Ten announced Wednesday that it would play football games starting the weekend of Oct. 24.

The league’s schools voted unanimously to resume football — a fact accidentally spilled by Nebraska president Ted Carter when he was caught on a hot microphone saying the Big ten would announce its return later in the day. The University of Minnesota football program had tweeted earlier in the day “When was the last time the the #Gophers started a football season in October? #TuesdayTrivia,” starting the speculation.

Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren was joined by Northwestern president Morton Schapiro, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez, Penn State A.D. Sandy Barbour and Northwestern A.D. Jim Phillips, and conference medical advisory group co-chair Dr. James Borchers of Ohio State at a press conference to announce that conference teams would play eight games each, with a plus-one game after that in which the teams are seeded and then play their cross-divisional counterparts — the No. 1 team in the “Legends” Division playing the No. 1 team in the “Leaders” division and so on, the weekend Dec. 18-19.

No fans will be allowed at games, which will be played on campus, Barbour said.

“We are looking to see what we can do on a on a campus by campus basis to accommodate the families of our student-athletes, both home and away, as well as the families of staffs,” she said. “But as a conference, we’ve made a decision — no public sale of tickets.”

The conference will begin daily testing for COVID-19 on Sept. 30 on all 14 conference campuses. Test results must be completed and recorded prior to each practice or game. Student-athletes who test positive for the coronavirus through point of contact daily testing would require a polymerase chain reaction test to confirm the result of the POC test. Each Big Ten team will have a chief infection officer report testing data to the league, which will make decisions about practice and competition based on team positivity rate and population positivity rate.

Football players who test positive for COVID-19 must wait at least 21 days to return to competition, and will undergo comprehensive cardiac testing before being cleared by a cardiologist assigned by each university.

The conference also will shut down teams that have a positivity rate of 5 percent or higher.

“Everyone associated with the Big Ten should be very proud of the groundbreaking steps that are now being taken to better protect the health and safety of the student-athletes and surrounding communities,” Borchers said in a prepared statement. “The data we are going to collect from testing and the cardiac registry will provide major contributions for all 14 Big Ten institutions as they study COVID-19 and attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease among wider communities.”

Phillips said conference teams should be allowed to compete for College Football Playoff berths. The CFP pairings are to be announced Dec. 20. Phillips said he has spoken to both Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta, chairman of the CFP, and CFP executive director Bill Hancock.

“It’s something that I know our student-athletes across our 14 institutions, really, really are excited about,” Phillips said. “A chance not only with the CFP, but within the bowl structure. And it’s something that’s been connected with the Big Ten for a lot of years.”