Maxwell Little stood in the bright sunshine, with a crowd of fellow graduate students cheering around him. He was introduced to this gathering Tuesday as one of the early members of Concerned Student 1950, the campus group that ignited the fight against alleged racial injustice here at the University of Missouri which climaxed in the resignation of the president and the chancellor on Monday. People here hung on Little's every word, and after the rally dispersed, he had some words of thanks for the football team.
"To get things done, we had to have some leverage," Little said, "and that leverage was the strength of the football team."
He went on, though, and called for more.
"I'm just waiting on the entire country as far as collegiate athletics to step up," he continued. "Football has taken the lead. I'm looking for basketball, I'm looking for volleyball, I'm looking for lacrosse – the wealthy, the elite, to step up and say we have to join in the fight for justice."
Asked if he felt that should happen, he said:
"I think it should have happened yesterday."
There is great opportunity for teams across the country to stand up and speak out. The power of those who play sports has been revealed and lauded. Yet there is a more worrisome side, too: the pressure on student-athletes to follow what the Missouri football team did.
That pressure will be more intense now than ever.
"I feel it's kind of sad that it took the football team for there to actually be some kind of change," said Amir Paschal, Jr., a senior here who is from Ferguson, Missouri. Paschal said he has been called the n-word multiple times during his time at Missouri. "If the football team wasn't as involved, maybe we wouldn't have had the same outcome."
That's become startlingly obvious. Even though a student nearly starved himself to death, the true momentum only kicked in when the football team pledged support by threatening to boycott its upcoming game against BYU. Even Michael Sam said, "None of this s--t happens without the football team."
There have been protests in the hours and days since on other campuses, but none have garnered much attention yet. Will there be a tacit push for other football teams (and basketball teams) to act? And if the momentum here abates, will there be pressure for this particular football team to threaten another boycott?
This is the world we live in, where the head football coach is more powerful than the school president, and the football team represents a school more publicly than any academic program. Even without the added pressure to take a stand, there is an identity that's foisted upon the football team: the school's identity.
"They are representing the school," said Allison Hughes, a freshman. "If they are representing the school that looks racist, they are representing that."
It's one thing for a millionaire coach to bear this kind of burden, but the players on the team are often teenagers. They could feel pressure from teammates, fellow students, family back home, and the coach if they feel a scholarship is at stake. If they do act, there could be a backlash against them for being ungrateful or arrogant. If they don't act, they could be perceived as racist or selfish or unfeeling.
"In theory it's a good thing, but can be a bad thing," said Louis Moore, associate professor of history at Grand Valley State. "There's so much public backlash to athletes speaking out. This generation hasn't seen how we react to college athletes speaking out. We haven't really gone through this the way we did in the '60s."
Even here, amid a near-constant show of support and gratitude, there is some skepticism. One student said she has already heard suspicion from both white and black students about the motivation behind the football boycott.
"Some people argue the only reason why they did that was they didn't want to play," Brittany Omotosho, a junior from Chicago, said of the 4-5 Tigers, "because they're losing this season."
So there is a risk of negative feedback from fellow students, from administrators, and from the outside world. There's the shut-up-and-play contingent, and the values-above-sport side. And if football players push for compensation for their performance – which until Sunday was the primary issue rallying student-athletes – those two factions will further entrench.
The power of every college football team grew significantly this week. So did the opportunity for every college football team.
And so did the expectations of every college football team.
No comments:
Post a Comment