Brian T. Smith applauds Missouri football players for taking action.
If you think this doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong.
If you don’t like politics in your sports page, too bad.
If you’re already tired of hearing about it, just keep reading.
Because Missouri is worth your time.
The college kids who called out a university and changed a culture simply by sitting out. A 4-5 football team that accomplished more during the last two days than every other program will pull off the entire year. Monday’s stunning reminder that sports are never, ever just about sports and every generation has its own voice.
If it chooses to use it. Which boycotting Tigers did Saturday, when a single social-media tweet shook up everything — a school, a city, a region, a sports country, all of college football — then took down tone-deaf Missouri president Tim Wolfe and chancellor R. Bowen Loftin on Monday in the same rapidfire news cycle.
“It’s impressive they decided to bond together and the coach (Gary Pinkel) backed them. That’s not an easy position to be in, so I commend them for it,” Texans left tackle Duane Brown said. “I don’t know the backstory on it. But I commend the coach, professors and everyone who backed the football team.”
The stories leading up to the strike are as ugly as they are disgusting: Missouri’s student association president racially abused; the N-word directed at Legion of Black Collegians members; feces smeared in the shape of a swastika on a residence hall bathroom wall. All in the shadow of Ferguson, Mo., which lies about 120 miles to the east and became a national racial divide barely a year ago.
There was a week-long hunger strike by a Missouri student and threats of walkouts by faculty. But nothing
moved the 24/7 meter until more than 30 united African-American players at a mostly white school vowed to boycott the Tigers’ game Saturday against BYU at Arrowhead Stadium — home of the NFL’s Chiefs — unless a hesitant Wolfe first stepped down.
Potentially expensive
There was a $1 million loss on the line for Mizzou. There were centuries of hate, ignorance and intolerance in the hands of student-athletes living up to the best part of their collective name.
“The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ ” the tweet read.
Wolfe finally fell Monday. His immediate resignation was followed by the announcement that Loftin, Texas A&M’s former president, will step down at Missouri at the end of the year. Then there were the promises of new initiatives to address on-campus racial turmoil, a first chief officer in charge of equality and diversity, and increased support for those who experience discrimination.
All because some football players — “dumb,” “egotistical,” “narcissistic” football players — threatened not to play a stupid game.
“Regardless of where people may fall on the issue itself, I just applaud the fact that studentathletes — many of whom we criticize for not being involved in the campus, outside of their sport — were willing to take on an issue, especially one that’s not related to compensation or unionization,” said Daron Roberts, a former NFL and college football coach who serves as founding director of the Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation at the University of Texas.
We’ve become numb to the fantasy of sports. Endless games blend with innumerable stats. Everything’s constantly televised, always oversold, and ridiculously overhyped.
Sam back in school
Monday in Columbia, Mo., was proof of the hearts and brains beneath all the armor. And for the second consecutive year, football in the Midwest checked the country’s pulse.
Michael Sam was once a Tiger. The former Hitchcock High School star — who became the first openly gay player drafted in the NFL in 2014 by St. Louis — was back on his college campus when Missouri again spoke out loud for the nation to hear.
“It always starts with sports. Not just the football team, but sports in general,” Sam told Bleacher Report. “Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe. … Black or white, gay or straight, we are a family. And family sticks together.”
Not nearly as often as it should.
Missouri’s roar is rarely heard anymore in the image-saturated world of sports.
Owners won recent labor wars in the NFL and NBA because players were too selfish and cash flow-driven to stick together. Strip away charity acts — most of which are fueled by public relations personnel — and only a special few are ever willing to speak atop the unprecedented platform they’ve been given.
Pros too hesitant
What if the Cowboys or an opposing team refused to take the field while accused woman-beater Greg Hardy was wearing a Dallas uniform for self-obsessed owner Jerry Jones?
What if it didn’t take the shooting of a hoodiewearing 17-year-old for some of the biggest entertainment names in sports to actually use their public voice?
There was no what-if in Missouri. The Tigers just saw it, felt it and acted. Like anyone would when they’re not living in a fantasy. Like proud young men with clear eyes, full hearts and something big to say in the hard world of real life.