Mizzou Player Strike Raises Fascinating Questions
The University of Missouri's football players are on strike. (It's refreshing to see the defense and special teams joining the offense, which hasn't shown up all season, on strike. Great team unity).
Why are Mizzou players on strike?
Because of two instances of racial slurs on campus, a poop swastika -- seriously, it's like "South Park" is writing a campus satire -- graduate student health issues, and a lack of action from University of Missouri president Tim Wolfe. Why Wolfe? Because presumably it is now the university president's job to make sure that no one ever says anything offensive to anyone on campus via spoken or written word, or poop hate symbols. (I haven't Googled it, but couldn't the poop swastika actually be a meta commentary ridiculing the swastika? Like, I'm sure that has been featured in a Brooklyn art show at some point in the past ten years. Think about it, if someone made a poop Alabama logo at Auburn, would you immediately think it was endorsing Alabama? Or the exact opposite? But I digress).
Anyway, activists are demanding that Wolfe step down after announcing his white privilege in a public forum. (Isn't announcing your white privilege at a public forum just more evidence of white privilege? Why are people there to see you denounce your white privilege? Because you have the power to call a press conference thanks to your white privilege. By the way, if I were a rapper, I would totally name myself "White Privilege." Game. Over.)
So there's a hunger strike and some people camping out and now the Missouri football team has decided it won't play unless the president steps down.
Again, this is all real.
The football team's protest is a natural outgrowth of social media trends on college campuses. These days it's very popular to protest things that everyone is already opposed to. ("Bro, your micro aggressions against my anti-slavery petition will not stand.") But the protest really takes off when you find a villain and charge him with the root cause of the issues at hand. Enter President Wolfe, an aloof middle-aged white man who is the perfect villain for a campus crusade against racism. Even if, you know, he isn't racist or involved in any of the actions on campus that people are protesting.
So you've got your villain, what comes next?
You demand his firing.
Because it's not a real bona fide campus protest unless someone gets fired. The mob needs a head to parade around. "You know how much we fought racism at Mizzou? We replaced one middle-aged white dude with another middle aged white dude. Eracism, bitch!"
I don't think it's going to cure campus racism if Wolfe steps down. But everyone knows that it's impossible to have political views in our modern social media era unless there's an evil person to blame. The mob rapidly sweeps across campus life until it envelops the football team too. Honestly, the biggest surprise here is that it's taken this long for college athletes to get involved in dumb campus protests.
Even though this Missouri football protest is patently absurd and unlikely to change anything, it's simultaneously fascinating to me at the same time.
Why?
Because of what it might represent in the future.
Let's dive in and discuss five big issues at play here.
1. Mizzou's players are striking.
I happen to think they're striking for a dumb reason. But what if they were striking to be paid to play football? I might well support that. These players make millions for their universities. What would happen if one team's strike spread across college football and on one Saturday no one played any games? What happens then? Think of the billions of dollars at stake for the universities and their television partners. If they unite, the players have the power here.
The schools are obligated to deliver games to the television networks. The schools use those funds to pay for coaches, facilities, and virtually all athletics on college campuses. How many school athletic department budgets could survive without a month of football? What happens if the games can't happen due to player strike?
While I make fun of social media activism because it's often mindnumbingly oversimplified and rooted in a demand that free speech be curtailed, it also would be easy to organize players. What happens if Mizzou fails to take the field on Saturday against BYU? The university owes a million dollars to BYU. They have to pay that fee even if the game doesn't happen. Mizzou also loses out on ticket sales and concessions -- it would have to refund ticket prices and, potentially, donations for all missed games. Moreover, what happens to Mizzou's SEC checks if it doesn't finish the season? Does the SEC dock its revenue share millions of dollars since the majority of the value comes from football games? We just don't know.
Fortunately for the SEC Mizzou's games against Tennessee and Arkansas don't implicate the conference title, but how would the SEC and the playoff committee consider a forfeit due to a player strike? Can you imagine if Tennessee won the SEC East or Arkansas won the SEC West via a Mizzou forfeit?
From a legal perspective this is all fascinating.
2. What can Gary Pinkel do?
He can't do anything, the multi-millionaire coach is powerless here. If he threatens his players and forces them to play, good luck recruiting minority athletes after that stance. The power dynamic is fascinating here -- the players have the power when they unite.
Mizzou stinks this year, so they're probably going to finish 4-8, but what if a team in the college football playoff went on strike? Or let's pretend that Mizzou's players were on a team that was actually good, what if this was last year and Mizzou refused to take the field for the SEC title game? You talk about nervous television executives.
Again, there are billions of dollars at stake in these games. Put simply, the games must go on.
Gary Pinkel will keep issuing a predictable response praising his players and condemning racism. He will be praised for this by sportswriters -- if he's really lucky and no one else changes genders this year he might even get an ESPY for courage! -- but the simple truth is this: it would be infinitely more courageous for Pinkel to say, "I don't think the protest makes any sense and I think these guys should get back to playing football."
But Pinkel would get crushed for this by the media and his recruiting would suffer. Hell, his coaching career might end.
No one has more to lose from this protest and less to gain than Gary Pinkel.
He's probably having several jumbo glasses of wine as we speak. I would be.
3. The sports media will almost universally praise Mizzou players.
Everyone's afraid of being called racist -- especially if you're a white male sportswriter, which is like 90% of all sportswriters in the country -- so the easiest thing to do is write a boilerplate column praising the courage of the players.
After all, what's the payoff in pointing out that a poop swastika isn't actually directed at black football players? Or that racial slurs happen everywhere and are unlikely to be solved by not playing a football game?
No, don't you get it, these guys hate racism more than you and me and everyone else. They hate racism so much they are not going to play a football game -- that they'll probably lose.
That's brave, man.
Look, if not playing football games cured racism, I'd be the first to say don't play football. But this is an absurd protest with absurd demands. The simple truth is this -- the sports media is overwhelmingly liberal white guys. It's easier to praise players than point out that this is the Kony of college football, a millennial-fueled uproar lacking in cogent goals or actionable claims.
Not all strikes are dumb, but this one? This one is very dumb.
#poopswastika
(And just to make it clear, I hate racism and death and cancer and domestic violence and terrorism and center seats in airplanes more than all of you do. I AM MORE OUTRAGED THAN ALL OF YOU COMBINED. And that's not just my white privilege speaking).
4. Predictable anger bubbles up from both sides of the political spectrum.
You'll have the liberal laudatory pieces, mostly written by the mainstream media that praise the players for being willing to "take a stand" and "realize that some things are more important than football" and then you'll have the conservatives demanding an aggressive response to these hippie slackers who want the government to give them things. The conservativse are already asking an interesting question: can't Mizzou just pull these players scholarships if they refuse to play football?
Now the school won't be ballsy enough to do it, but I think the answer is yes. The players are on scholarship specifically to play football, if they choose not to play, for any reason other than physical injury, they aren't fulfilling the obligations of their scholarship. Hence they've breached their scholarship contract and could lose their free ride for school, lodging and meals.
5. Can Mizzou forfeit these games?
If this situation continues to fester the easiest way to handle this would just be to cancel the rest of the season and forfeit the final three games instead of losing them on the field as Mizzou would probably do anyway. But, again, is that legal? Does Mizzou have a contractual obligation to deliver 12 games worth of football content to the SEC and its television partners? Would they be on the hook to make up millions of dollars in damages if they don't?
(The most entertaining aspect of this would be if Mizzou fielded a team of regular students from intramural football to fulfill its contractual obligation. Can you imagine watching this game? This would be incredible. It's like every mailbag question about regular college guys against D1 athletes come to life at once).
The biggest issue is that this Mizzou story doesn't stand alone, it's just part of a larger campus narrative -- we live in a time when many students believe they have a right not to be offended. I disagree, completely. I think the entire purpose of college is to challenge your opinions and examine ideas and beliefs that you may find repugnant. After all, how can you be sure of your own beliefs if you haven't studied the beliefs of others? Also, and this may be shocking to some of you youngsters reading this, but -- TRIGGER WARNING -- sometimes people are going to say mean things to you in life. I know, I know, if you need a safe place to rest after reading that menacing sentence I'd suggest going elsewhere. Outkick will always represent the free speech wing of the free speech party.
And even though this Mizzou football strike is incredibly dumb, the next one may not be.
Because players may not wait for the courts to decide how much money they should get paid, they may strike and make their own rules. And that football strike? Hell, I'd support the objectives of that football strike.