I won’t pretend to know all the details concerning the Missouri football team’s black players going on strike to protest the university president’s lack of action over several racist acts on campus. These athletes are pissed and want Missouri president Tim Wolfe removed from his position.
The players have vowed not to participate in any football related activities until their demands are met.
What I do know is that this could be the blueprint needed for change at every single university in the nation where college athletes are exploited for profit.
We saw what happened when Northwestern’s football team tried to unionize in order to have a larger say in how they are treated by their schools. They were not allowed to become a union by the powers that be. No way the good ole boys club was gonna let a bunch of “dumb athletes” come together to flex their collective muscles against the establishment.
While I admired what Northwestern tried to do, I knew it would be a failure. They were asking permission from the masters to be set free. You don’t ask for freedom. If you don’t like the rules, you simply stop playing the fucking game!
That’s what the Missouri football players are doing now. They aren’t begging anyone to let them unionize officially. They have come together as a group to enforce some change. They need no piece of paper to make them legitimate.
The lack of a football team taking the field next week will make their protest as legit as any official union. People will notice. Action will be taken.
Funny how folks sit up and pay attention when money is involved. Little protest signs are cute, but empty seats in a D1 football stadium? That will get folks fired.
As I said, I don’t know the full backstory that has led to Missouri football players wanting their university president removed from the job. I just know that striking college football players is a very good thing.
I have called for player strikes for years. I thought there should be a playoff setup years ago, and that football players should sit out bowl games until a playoff system was crafted.
I then realized that college athletes should be paid in a capitalist society like we have in America. I wanted a strike then so players could earn what they were worth. A scholarship was nice 50 years ago, but the trade doesn’t balance out now.
Tim Tebow should have been a millionaire coming out of Florida just as Julio Jones should have been when he exited Bama.
I find it shameful that some are calling for the Missouri players to lose their scholarships if they continue the strike. I thought football was just an extracurricular activity for student athletes? I could see punishing employees for not showing up to work, but these football players aren’t workers…are they?
Of course they are! They are generating income for the university.
Maybe the first school to follow suit should be Northwestern. They could show the powers that be that they don’t need any official recognition to form a solid union. Just refuse to play next week, hell the rest of the year. See how the people in charge like that.
Whatever demands Northwestern may have would be met pretty soon.
This Missouri strike could open up a lot of doors for college athletes. We may finally see some real change in college athletics.
The players have the power to make those changes happen. They are a cog in the machine, but a very important one. ESPN isn’t going to pay billions to show Mark Richt adjusting his microphone on the sidelines with no team on the field.
Fox won’t be interested in televising Nick Saban in his Khakis walking around the field all pissed off with no Bama players blowing up opposing running backs.
It would be a dream come true for me to see next weekend with multiple college football team strikes taking place. I love college football, but I hate the system that doesn’t properly reward the most important part of the game, the athletes.
Missouri is laying the groundwork for college athlete strikes for different reasons than the financial changes I want to see. But the word “strike” is the key here. If any team can’t see that they can do the same to get better treatment from the NCAA and their own universities then I guess those teams deserve the table scraps that they will keep getting.