Ryan Glasspiegel
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I was at the Big Ten football parent protest outside Chicago on Friday, and noticed a considerable amount of schadenfreude on social media that there were “only” about two dozen protestors on a workday morning with two days’ notice in the middle of a pandemic where travel is scarce. That the parents largely had cogent messages and calls for transparency from Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, who’s still yet to address players and parents two weeks after canceling Fall sports, was almost less of a topic of conversation online than the fact that they were slightly outnumbered by the media.
Nonetheless, Randy Wade, father of star Ohio State cornerback Shaun Wade, who could be a top 10 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, is planning another protest for this Saturday that will presumably draw many more throngs of people:
We will meet at the Rotunda at the shoe 11:00am this Saturday… The Ohio State parents association is leading the charge for continued answers…. We ask other Big Ten associates parents to join us or do the same at their perspective schools… #Fight pic.twitter.com/rXajncKj25
— Randy L Wade💯%🐐 f@❌ℹLy….. (@gslsff) August 23, 2020
It’ll be interesting to see if this spreads to other campuses in the Big Ten, but my guess is at the very least there will be a large gathering in Columbus. Lincoln and Iowa City and perhaps State College would also be solid bets if this were to extend to other cities.
Over the weekend, we learned that Big Ten athletic directors were apparently unanimous in their hopes to preserve fall football season. We also saw that Big Ten presidents and chancellors make an average of over $1 million per school in taxpayer money, yet they are hiding behind Kevin Warren and largely refusing to disclose how they voted (if they even voted at all) with regards to the season.
If the Big Ten thinks this is bad now, wait till they see what happens if they’re still hiding and refusing to give answers while the SEC, Big 12, and ACC are playing football.
If it was the athletes themselves protesting, I bet it would be more popular. I can’t get past the idea of watching parents protesting on behalf of their adult offspring. It just seems wrong to me.