Football players in the Pac-12 Conference have threatened to sit out of training camp and games.
Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated PressFootball players in the Pacific-12 Conference have threatened to sit out of training camp and games until the league addresses concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic and racial inequality, according to a letter to conference commissioner Larry Scott that was published on Sunday.
The letter reveals the rift between university administrators who have been plowing ahead with plans to stage football games and the young athletes tasked with playing a contact sport during a global pandemic. It comes at a time when college athletes have been speaking out more forcefully about social justice, compensation and other issues.
“We believe a football season under these conditions would be reckless and put us at needless risk. We will not play until there is real change that is acceptable to us,” said the Pac-12 players in a joint statement. The letter was published Sunday on The Players’ Tribune website.
“We support our student-athletes using their voice and have regular communications with our student-athletes at many different levels on a range of topics,” said a Pac-12 spokesperson in a statement Saturday evening. The league declined to comment further on Sunday after publication of the players’ letter.
The letter was the brainchild of a handful of upperclassmen football players at California and Stanford and, according to a statement on Sunday, has the backing of “hundreds” of players at all 12 universities in the conference. A dozen players were named in the letter. The players were advised by Ramogi Huma, founder of the National Collegiate Players Association advocacy group and a former football player at UCLA.
The bulk of the Pac-12 players’ demands deal with Covid-19. Although the virus doesn’t appear to have as many adverse effects on young and healthy individuals, such as 18-to-22 year-old Division I athletes, it has disproportionately affected communities of color, where rates of diabetes, obesity, hypertension and other risk factors are high.
“The threat that coronavirus poses to us and our families is not only real but exposes the inequities of the system that we are a part of,” said Valentino Daltoso, a senior lineman at California. “Moving forward we want to have a system in place that values Black lives by ensuring that a majority black workforce is provided basic economic rights and health protections.”
The letter demands that any player who opts out of the 2020 season due to coronavirus-related concerns not see their eligibility or spot on the roster jeopardized. In lieu of leaving heath protocols up to their universities, athletes want to select a third party to enforce health and safety standards.
The Pac-12 has previously stated that it will honor athletic scholarships for athletes who don’t participate over health concerns. The conference hasn’t yet published health protocols but on Friday released a tentative 10-game conference-only football schedule beginning on Sept. 26 that was drawn up with “extensive consultation with the Pac-12’s Medical Advisory Committee.”
Additionally, the letter calls for the termination of “Covid-19 agreements,” forms that dozens of universities drafted this summer that aim to release schools from liability should an athlete contract coronavirus or experience complications. Some schools have been making participation in team activities contingent on signing the waivers, though it is unclear how prevalent this practice is in the Pac-12. Of the 10 public universities in the league contacted by The Wall Street Journal about Covid-19 waivers, only Washington State, which provided its waiver, and Colorado, which confirmed that it didn’t have any such forms, responded.
Much of the players’ letter concerns what they describe as the racial and financial inequalities of the NCAA model, in which universities and mostly white coaches rake in millions from the success of a mostly Black, unpaid workforce. They cite the “excessive pay” of Scott and league football coaches, “lavish facility expenditures” and multibillion-dollar endowments as reasons why universities should not cut sports, as was done with 11 programs at Stanford.
The letter also aims to financially empower college athletes, who are currently unpaid amateurs. Athletes want to be able to obtain agents to help them navigate marketing themselves once profiting from their name, image and likeness becomes legal. More radically, they want the Pac-12 to distribute half of each sport’s total conference revenue among all participating athletes.
The Pac-12 letter is the latest and most dramatic instance of college athlete activism in a summer already marked by football players unmuzzling themselves to hold their powerful coaches and administrators to account.
Athletes first began speaking up following the murder of George Floyd in late May, calling out their coaches for limp statements on the value of black lives and resurfacing racially charged incidents that took place on the field or in the weightroom.
Florida State football players threatened to boycott practice upon learning that Mike Norvell, their first-year coach, exaggerated his outreach to players. Former Clemson players pressured celebrity coach Dabo Swinney into publicly addressing racial inequalities, which he had skirted in the immediate wake of Floyd’s death. The top returning rusher in the Southeastern Conference, Mississippi State’s Kylin Hill, said he would not suit up on Saturdays until the state removed Confederate insignia from its flag.
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Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com
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