As far as what to do, I don’t think the OPs ideas are wise. I would just call the coach into the office and remind him that the football team is his responsibility. And if they don’t play, that’s on him. And if they don’t play, that he should reasonably expect that his budget for future games and seasons will be affected.
And if they don’t play, fuck 'em. I would think that the better players, who are usually the leaders of the teams would turn that around, as they have hopes of being drafted by the NFL. But, really, as big a deal as football is on some campuses, we need to remember, it’s just a game. A game that I love, but just a game.
I would have called the coach and a group of players into my office and talked about what we could do to improve the situation, and assure them that I would do whatever I could to combat racism on our campus. That’s a win-win.
This article paints a more complete picture of the issues:
SNIP
The president didn’t have previous work experience in academia and didn’t have background as an academic (highest degree was a bachelors). He was a VP at IBM and then a consultant. Judging by that, he probably doesn’t have the necessary experience or “correct” beliefs to lead a university in the micro-agression age.
I agree… it’s like they’re protesting the fact that racists exist on their campus, and holding the President responsible, which is absurd, and reprehensible.
It’s entirely possible that there’s more going on institutionally than we know from the articles, but as it stands, it looks like these people are just being butt-hurt, disruptive assholes, instead of actually doing something productive about the race issues.
By that, I mean that the vast majority of Mizzou students are going to see that the black population got upset and disruptive about something that isn’t within the power of the university to change, and they’re going to fit that into their internal narratives, and for many of them, that’s going to be a negative thing against black people, not a positive.
Possibly. But I think its important to first get the coach back on track. The football team is his responsibility. What the president needs to try to do is bring the coach back into the fold. If he comes and wants to do what you suggest, great. But I’d really make it his problem to solve. And let him know that if he sides with the players, well, he’s drawn his line in the sand and I’d carry out what I said.
As pointed out earlier in the thread, Pinkel (the Coach) will likely get a statute of him on campus sometime in the future. He is the winningest coach in Missouri history and led them to heights they would never have dreamed of. The guy is basically an institution there - Missouri’s Steve Spurrier, if you will. It’d be almost unheard of for a college president to be able to intimidate him.
College presidents have sold their souls to their big time athletic programs. They are in no position to dictate terms and conditions to any football or basketball head coaches who are consistently competitive and filling the seats. Nor, in the future when they are getting egged on by organizers like Ramogi Huma, will they be able to dictate terms to players who threaten last minute boycotts of games.
I know rather less than nothing about college football - if the players refuse to play, do they lose their scholarships (assuming they have one, which seems likely)?
They get scholarships, meal per diems, other perks of being an athlete. I mentioned earlier in the thread that the university would have been justified in taking that away (and suspending the pay of the coach who supported the “strike”), but they would not have actually done it because of the additional negative PR such a move would have generated.
We don’t have to find out now since the president has resigned.
As I understand it, the scholarships are renewable on a year-by-year basis, and can be not renewed for almost any reason. While some of the players who threatened to strike may find their scholarships not renewed next year, it probably won’t be because of their actions this week. The risk for the coach is to get a reputation for siding with the administrators instead of the team and that would not be conducive to good recruiting. Poor recruiting equals poor results and terminations all around.
I’m disappointed in the outcome , but obvious this spread like wildfire and the political pressure was too much with even a Missouri US Senator getting involved. I do hope the crybaby activists remember that they attend the University of Missouri, not Hogwarts. The next president won’t be able to waive a magic wand and make all racism disappear.
It’s also been reported that not at all of the football team was behind the strike. I’m not surprised and I suspect team chemistry has been poisoned due to a grad student with a martyr complex.
The faculty don’t like him because he’s not one of them and because he cut budgets.
The grad students don’t like him because the school took away their health-insurance subsidies (even though according to the school, the ACA requires this).
The liberals don’t like him because the school defunded Planned Parenthood.
And the African-American activists don’t like him because he didn’t do what most University presidents would have done about a couple of anonymous racial incidents: cancel classes, do the correct public emoting, proclaim collective guilt/vicimization, and then spend a shitload of money on whatever it is they demand you spend money on.
The first three of those are the tinder, the last was the flame.
The students share the same ideology as the children now having tantrums at Yale: they want their university to be a “safe space” where ugly people and ideas never confront them, where the fact that they are hurt or offended is supposed to bring the world to a screeching halt, where public discussions are extensions of their therapy (“I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain”).
And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.
