College athletes’ power on display
The Missouri football boycott lasted only two days — but that’s because it was successful.
After the resignation Monday of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe, the players stood down, ending what they called a “solidarity strike,” and everyone pronounced themselves ready to get back to football.
But the question now — here and elsewhere in college athletics — is, What comes next?
Missouri athletics director Mack Rhoades and football coach Gary Pinkel, who publicly supported the players, said they did not believe a precedent was set.
“Are we gonna solve every issue, every problem this way?
Absolutely not,” Rhoades said.
He’s correct. But anyone watching or listening to what the Missouri players said Monday could be forgiven for wondering. Speaking to reporters on the Carnahan Quad, with the tents of the Concerned Student 1950 protest as a backdrop, sophomore defensive end Charles Harris said, “Let this be a testament to all of the athletes across the country that you do have power. It started with a few individuals on our team, and look what it’s become. Look where it’s at right now. This is nationally known, and it started with just a few.”
It sounded like a rallying cry — or a warning. Could the Missouri boycott become a catalyst for similar actions by other college sports teams?
The issues that led to the turmoil at Missouri are complex. The protesting students and players saw a pattern of continued race issues they believed were being ignored by the school’s leadership. A graduate student spent a week on a hunger strike. Students camped out. Some faculty members canceled classes. Chief among various lists of complaints and demands was a call for Wolfe’s exit.
But it’s the result, not the reasons, that has others across college athletics concerned.
When the football players decided not to participate in teamrelated activities — potentially jeopardizing a game Saturday against Brigham Young in Kansas City, Mo., that would have cost the school at least $1 million — the momentum of the protests rapidly grew. And ultimately, it worked. Wolfe resigned. Later Monday, Missouri Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin did, too, though his resignation is effective at the end of the year.
This isn’t the first boycott. But because it threatened a football game and toppled high-ranking university officials, it has resonated the loudest.
Two years ago, Grambling football players refused to travel to Jackson State for a game that was subsequently canceled. Their complaints included substandard facilities, unhealthy conditions and long bus rides, as well as a feeling they had been neglected after the firing of coach Doug Williams several weeks earlier.
Last spring, Oklahoma football players refused to participate in practice for a week in protest after a video surfaced of members of the campus chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity sing- ing a song with racist lyrics.
Pinkel said he discussed alternate options for protest with his players, including some other actions taken by Oklahoma’s players, who had also made a collective statement last spring during a silent march, arms linked, through campus. But when the Missouri players chose instead to boycott, Pinkel and Rhoades supported it. Coach and AD insisted they didn’t feel as though the players had leveraged them — but what other course could they have taken?
“Gary did about the only thing he could do,” an athletics director at a school in a Power Five conference told USA TODAY Sports. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “That’s the scary part about it. Something can come out of nowhere in a hurry.”
The person, as well as an AD at another Power Five school, separately emphasized the need, more than ever before, for proactive and consistent communication with student-athletes.
Although Pinkel said team leaders decided not to speak with reporters Monday, several did anyway. At a rally on the Carnahan Quad, with the Concern Student 1950 tents as an immediate backdrop, Missouri safety Ian Simon read a statement and said the football players wanted the focus to remain on the protests — or rather, the protestors’ complaints — and didn’t want to be- come the story.
“Our main message is to distract from the narrative that has been out in the media,” Simon said. “It’s not about us. We just wanted to use our platform to take a stance for a fellow concerned student on an issue, especially being as ... a fellow black man’s life was on the line.”
But no one doubted the impact of the football team. Reuben Faloughi, a Missouri graduate student who is part of the Concerned Student 1950 protest, played linebacker at Georgia from 2009 to 2012 and was part of Georgia’s Student-Athlete Leadership Academy in 2012. He understood what the players’ involvement meant.
“It definitely gave us a broader, wider platform to get our message heard,” Faloughi said.
And although he noted the situation at Missouri had unique circumstances, he recognized the potential.
“Each of these (athletics) programs is different,” Faloughi said. “But they are similar at the end of the day. A lot of these athletes have the same experience. The ingredients are there on other campuses. It’s just a matter of putting it together and putting it into action.”