Athletes act for positive change.
In forcing president’s ouster, Mizzou players set bold precedent.
Daron Roberts strolled into his Plan II honors course on sports leadership at the University of Texas on Monday morning and announced to his class that he was scrapping that day’s scheduled lesson plan.
He wanted to speak about the combustible Missouri situation instead.
By 10:40 that morning, one of his students had interrupted and shoved his cellphone across Roberts’ desk to alert him to the breaking news. Univer- sity of Missouri President Tim Wolfe had resigned under fire in the aftermath of loud protests by Missouri student groups that coalesced with about 30 angry, socially conscious football players objecting to the administration’s gross neglect concerning a series of racial incidents.
“I guess that ruins the end- ing,” Roberts joked to the classroom.
Rather, it might just signal the start.
What transpired in the past week on the campus at Columbia, Mo., and ended with the removal of a university system president might lead to all sorts of athletic upheaval and social unrest and future civil disobedience among college athletes. And that’s a good thing if it’s as
measured and rational and galvanized as the Thoughtful Thirty were on that SEC campus. Missouri listened. So did the NCAA. And the world. Or they had better. A strong, defiant stance by politically conscientious football players could grow roots that extend from Berkeley to Boston. Northwestern’s players sought to unionize but were blocked. Now the Missouri administration took heed of an ugly series of racial provocations and took the proper steps, and athletes and students alike effected meaningful change. Without the athletes’ threatened boycott of this week’s BYU game, which could have cost Missouri up to $1 million, Wolfe might still be in power, and growing disenchantment could have flowered.
“The more I saw the numbers of the $1 million, there was no doubt in my mind they would have boycotted that game,” said Roberts, a serious, 36-yearold Harvard law grad who was one of the first African-Americans to serve as student body president at Texas. “It’s obvious some powerful people in Missouri were not willing to let that happen. We’d be having a very different conversation next Monday if that happened.”
Now that athletes at a Power Five conference school realize the power they hold, it’s only a matter of time until other teams do the same. Hopefully, responsibly.
Longhorns football players, black and white, endorsed the courageous stand of their Missouri counterparts.
“I think that as a player, you have a bigger voice than people perceive you have,” Texas defensive tackle Desmond Jackson said. “They stood up, and it was the right thing to do. I have the utmost respect for them.”
“If you have the support of your teammates and coaches, you can use your platform as student-athletes for good causes,” center Taylor Doyle said. “We do have a platform before us. I see nothing wrong with fighting for causes you stand in line with.”
This doesn’t mean the athletes should gather and pound their fists and demand change every time they want shorter practices or lobster at the training table. However, the numbers these athletes have in football and basketball are so large, and the power they wield is so great, that it’d be foolish to think we won’t see similar groundbreaking stories like this on other campuses. Athletic directors are on notice.
Roberts’ UGS 303 class, called a Gameplan for Winning at Life, has been attended by 98 percent of the freshman athletes at Texas. It is mandatory that they sit next to nonathletes and that young men and women from affluent homes and economically disadvantaged backgrounds gather to learn about race relations and be exposed to conflicting viewpoints of life.
“Some of this may stem from the handling of the Ferguson situation,” Roberts said of the outrage over the 2014 police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. “The one constant you see is Gary Pinkel. I really think we have to give him and the AD (Mack Rhoades, fresh from the University of Houston) credit. It’s apparent to me the team and head coach value integrity and honesty and commitment. A lot of things get thrown around the walls of a locker room, but you can see they live it at Missouri.”
Because Missouri listened. And acted.