Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, left, and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields embrace after the Fiesta Bowl.
Photo: Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressLate Sunday night, an unlikely bunch of college kids flipped open their phones and laptops for a video call. One of the squares belonged to Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Ohio State’s Justin Fields occupied another.
It was a collection of the most important and influential college football players in the country, and they weren’t discussing the finer points of spread offenses. They were trying to reckon with issues that they felt their sports’ administrators had failed to address over many months of this pandemic, leading up to the precipice of a football season crumbling before their eyes.
The result was a united message that would send a sport already on the brink into a tizzy that would envelop coaches, advocates and politicians all the way up to President Trump.
“#WeWantToPlay,” Lawrence and others tweeted afterward. More telling was the image inside the tweet: a list of demands, such as universal health and safety protocols and guaranteed eligibility for players who opt out of the season.
Whether any or all of these players get to play this season is increasingly murky. Fields’s games this season have been postponed after the Big Ten and Pac-12 delayed their football seasons to 2021 because of the risks of playing during the pandemic.
But Lawrence’s games are still on because the Atlantic Coast Conference, where Clemson plays, is soldiering on, as are the Big-12 and Southeastern Conference.
The players’ move to nationally organize and unite with a message that would echo all over the country throughout this week began the way so many relationships do these days. Dylan Boles received a direct message.
Boles is a football player at Stanford and part of a coalition of Pac-12 athletes that had started organizing in early July to give themselves a voice on issues that were both longstanding and new to 2020. Through group messages and video calls, the Pac-12 athletes began hashing out their priorities on a broad field of issues: health concerns, scholarship protections, racial injustices, economic equity and more.
Many of these topics have been pressure points for college sports for years now, but recent events—such as the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd—had thrust them to the front burner. And these issues, they felt, were intertwined: college athletes, a preponderance of whom are black in the highest-revenue sports, were being asked to return to the field while the virus was raging without proper protections.
“I started realizing that there was a sentiment held among football players that wasn’t held before,” said Andrew Cooper, a cross-country athlete at Cal who has helped organize the Pac-12 movement. “It was clear everyone was feeling the same type of way, we just needed to begin facilitating the conversations between players.”
The result of those conversations was an open letter, signed by Players of the Pac-12, published in the Players Tribune on Aug. 2 that outlined their specific demands: scholarship protections, universal health and safety standards, revenue sharing and funding for social justice initiatives.
“#WeAreUnited in our commitment to secure fair treatment for college athletes,” the letter said. But soon after that hashtag began making waves, there was another one among college athletes gaining traction: #WeWantToPlay.
The widespread perception was that the two messages were at odds with one another. There was one group seemingly taking up arms against college sports’ governance and the other saying they just wanted to play. College football began feeling distinctly partisan.
As the tension built, Boles looked at his phone Sunday evening and saw that direct message on GroupMe. Clemson running back Darien Rencher wanted to talk.
Moments later, Boles and Rencher were chatting on FaceTime. Rencher was joined in the room by the most recognizable college football player in the country: Lawrence, the quarterback who once thumped Alabama in the national championship as a freshman and the favorite to become the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL draft. They had been promoting the #WeWantToPlay message, and they wanted to connect with Boles over where everything stood.
As these three college football players in supposedly clashing factions video chatted, they realized something surprising: they were actually saying the same things, just in very different ways. They all wanted to play—but with the proper protections for the athletes, short and long term, in place.
“That was a huge breakthrough,” Boles says.
After that FaceTime ended Sunday night, they scrambled to organize a broader Zoom call on a text chain. The group text’s name: College Football Players Association.
Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard was part of a Zoom call with Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields.
Photo: Sue Ogrocki/Associated PressIt took all of 30 minutes to assemble the game’s most influential players. It also included Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard and Alabama running back Najee Harris, among others, with a dozen joining Boles to hash out their vision. It finished late that night, and they gave Washington State defensive lineman Dallas Hobbs 20 minutes to make a graphic laying out those thoughts.
Hobbs sent it out, and the fuse was lit. At 12:01 a.m., as Sunday night ticked into the wee hours of Monday morning, Lawrence tweeted out the image that included both #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay. It included five points the players from both groups wanted, one of which was the creation of a college football players association—a step toward a union that could represent their interests in matters just like these.
As more players tweeted out that same graphic, it gained more traction. President Trump quoted Lawrence’s tweet and added: “The student-athletes have been working too hard for their season to be canceled.”
Whether they realized it or not, the players’ new supporters were promoting a movement that was effectively organizing to represent players and their interests against the administrators who run college sports.
It also gave the players a voice just as decisions were being made. Over the next couple of days, the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their seasons. Players and fans are still awaiting answers from the other leagues.
Boles says it would be unfortunate if the season gets canceled. He wants to play. But regardless of whether it happens, he says the frenzied of events from Sunday will be long-lasting. That’s because, he says, they laid the foundation to achieve changes that have simmered for so long.
“We now have established communication and a solidified platform for college athletes to be able to advocate for themselves,” Boles said.
Share Your Thoughts
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Write to Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
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