Even if there isn’t college football this fall, players have discovered their power
Whether there’s college football this fall — and we all know there won’t be, that’s been obvious for a month now to anyone paying attention — what happened as Sunday night turned into Monday morning may have changed college athletics forever.
Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence went from tweeting reasons why the season should be played despite COVID-19 under the hashtag #WeWantToPlay — one endorsed by many schools, giving it the feeling of an astroturf movement at times — to tweeting out a graphic listing the demands of representative athletes from all five power conferences. Among them: “Ultimately create a college football players association.”
It’s hard to say if Lawrence pulled one of the great bait-and-switches of all time — luring in the kind of people who insisted players to risk their lives to play football, only to unite with the Pac-12 athletes whose demands infuriated that same crowd — or this was a natural and organic outcome of the feeling-out process as players came to terms with their power. It was a seminal moment in the relationship between athletes and the schools where they play.
A Rubicon was crossed at some point after midnight, and it took the presumptive Heisman Trophy winner to lead us there.
With or without a fall football season, the fundamental dynamic that exists between school and player has changed forever. It took a pandemic to act as a catalyst, but both of the player-driven movements were centered around the idea that football doesn’t exist without them, that they are not the replaceable parts the lowest-common denominator coaches have told them for years that they are, that they get a say in all of this.
That they matter.
It wasn’t necessarily a given that those two movements would merge. The Pac-12 players were more focused on athlete rights and social justice, and using their leverage to those ends. Lawrence aligned with the #WeWantToPlay crowd, basically asking colleges to leave the decision up to players. The former appealed to reformers and athlete advocates; the latter to a different crowd, often with the support of schools themselves.
But what Lawrence and teammate Darien Rencher realized late Sunday night in a series of conversations with other players across the country was that they all really wanted the same thing — more control over their circumstances — and they could only get there together.
Social media did in a matter of hours what athlete organizers have been trying to do for more than 30 years without success. It brought a powerful group of athletes together at the same table to realize their interests and futures were not only shared but intertwined, and with that came the very first reckoning of the power they truly command.
Nigel Hayes, the Wisconsin basketball player, vocabularist and polymath, tried to organize a player boycott of an ACC-Big Ten Challenge game in 2016. He didn’t get far, but he understood in a way his peers did not the raw power created by their mere presence — a power entirely out of whack with the rights they had. Football players have not only figured that out, collectively, as a group, but have shown they are prepared to wield that power like a blade.
Whatever form their organization eventually takes, it will have the ability to speak for athletes who do not, under the current system, have a voice. That’s going to be a rude awakening for the NCAA and its member schools, but it’s actually going to benefit the NCAA in the long run. Some kind of trade group would allow the players to bargain for group licenses and endorsements under expanded name, image and likeness rights, bringing back the beloved college football video games. Some kind of advocacy group would help ensure basic rights like player safety and long-term medical care, also to the NCAA’s eventual benefit. It doesn’t have to be a union. In any collective structure, the players are stronger together.
Only the Power 5 presidents know whether the threat of athletes organizing was the final straw that put an end to college football for the fall. The reality is, it shouldn’t even have taken that. It was clear from the moment football players got on campus last month that they couldn’t be kept safe, that the disease would spread among them, and from them to others who might not be young and healthy and recover in “3-5 days,” as N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said and probably wishes he hadn’t.
If there isn’t a college football season, it’s because we, as a people, didn’t earn it. There was a path forward out of this pandemic back in February and maybe even March, and we, collectively, chose not to follow it. The federal government has failed us, terribly. People who refused to wear masks and stay out of bars failed themselves. College football is the price we all pay for all of that.
But from this awful crucible, at least one good thing has emerged: College football players have realized that they, not their martinet coaches or loafer-clad athletic directors or glad-handing presidents, are the engine that drives the entire sport.
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Even if there isn’t college football this fall, players have discovered their power."
