University of Missouri president, Timothy Wolfe, resigned at an emergency meeting on Monday. Flint Firebirds head coach John Gruden and assistant coach Dave Karpa were rehired and given three-year contracts after an impromptu meeting with OHL commissioner, David Branch, on Monday.
These personnel changes were the works of amateur athletes, whose strength in numbers proved powerful at rectifying cases of injustice.
By now you are well aware that Firebirds owner, Rolf Nilsen, fired Gruden and Karpa on Sunday after the team’s victory over the defending MasterCard Memorial Cup champion Oshawa Generals. There were reports that the coaches were fired even after a win because of a lack of ice time for the owner’s son.
In a scene straight out of Rudy, the 25 players handed in their uniforms upon learning of the coaches’ dismissal. Even the owner’s son showed solidarity with his teammates and turned in his jersey.
On Monday evening, the Firebirds announced that the team had reinstated the coaches. Nilsen released the following statement:
“Last night, after our emotional shootout game against the Oshawa Generals, I made a decision with regards to our coaching staff, which was an irresponsible mistake.
This morning, we took steps to immediately reinstate the coaches. Today, the team’s senior leadership met with the players to apologize and have a very frank discussion about next steps leading to a resolution.”
Similar solidarity was demonstrated this weekend south of the border. The University of Missouri has seen weeks of protest over Wolfe’s leadership—or lack thereof—surrounding multiple discriminatory acts toward students and faculty of colour on campus.
A pivotal event was the decision made by a grad student to go on a hunger strike after a swastika was written in feces on a dorm wall.
Jonathan Butler had been trying to raise awareness about racial tension on campus for months and on the eighth day of his formal protest he got some traction. Butler has become the face of a group called Concerned Student 1950 and wrote a letter announcing his hunger strike when the group’s homecoming parade protest was not shown much credence. Butler was so serious about the cause that he changed his will.
His efforts seemingly fell on deaf ears—it wasn’t receiving widespread attention on any of the major U.S. outlets. That is until SEC football players became involved, deciding to boycott any and all football related activities on Saturday night. The football team is disproportionately black in relation to the population of the school, as just under 70 percent of the players are black in relation to just seven percent of the student body. The best chance for that vocal minority to be heard was for the most famous among them using their platform.
The players didn’t just say they wanted Wolfe to step down, they first said they won’t play until Butler eats, more concerned for their fellow student’s well-being than anything else. Butler called off his strike after Wolfe resigned.
On Sunday, Wolfe doubled down and refused to resign. But less than 24 hours later he had no choice. In his media availability it was clear Wolfe had received the message “to our students from Concerned Student 1950, to our grad students, football students, and other students, the frustration and anger is clear, real, and I don’t doubt it for a second.”
What Flint and Missouri have in common is the demonstration by athletes that organized labour is powerful. But this was as much about power and leverage as organization. If the Missouri debate team gets together and says we aren’t competing, nothing happens. If the Flint trainers and support staff handed in their team-issued uniforms, this isn’t even a news story. We live in a sports obsessed culture. The greatest actors in the Broadway show that is sports are the athletes. The best way they can utilize their leverage is by withholding their services and affecting the bottom line.
In the U.S., the biggest sports revenue-maker is football. In Canada, it is hockey. How do you get attention and hit the power brokers where it hurts? Hit them in the pocket book.
The OHL league office weighed in because this publicity was not good for the league’s brand. The University of Missouri took action because if they had been forced to forfeit their upcoming game against Brigham Young University, the athletic department would then have an “I owe you” in the form of $1 million to BYU. The game was set to be broadcast on ESPN. The worldwide leader in sports broadcasting being robbed of its program because of race issues at a Southern university would be bad optics for all parties involved.
What the events of the last week show is that these athletes are just scratching the surface of their true bargaining power. If players say we aren’t playing in March Madness, the Memorial Cup, or the College football bowl games until their demands are met, how fast are those demands met?
Skeptics have said that both teams had losing records so the players didn’t have much to lose. What they had to lose was the opportunity to derive any benefit from all the sweat equity they invested in training. For these players, making a case with scouts to go pro, personal accolades and awards, and for some of the older players taking advantage of the last opportunity to play competitively, was all at risk.
It’s inconvenient at times to stand up for your principles. It is more important to make a stand when it involves sacrifice because that shows how dire the situation is. The fact you are willing to risk personal gain for something bigger than yourself draws attention to the cause.
Despite the fact that Missouri coach, Gary Pinkel, is paid $4 million annually by the university, he and his staff stood with his players. Despite the fact that Firebirds players in their draft year like centre Will Bitten are in line for millions in less than a year, the team was unified.
It is tough to get 25–30 people to agree on anything never mind taking a stand for something controversial when money is at stake.
Martin Luther King famously said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” It would have been easy for members of both teams to stay silent and say these issues are out of our hands and above our pay grade. It’s refreshing to see amateur athletes who are in many ways powerless use their conscience to engineer power.