August 2, 2020
This field goal as time expired gave
Colorado a 16-13 win over Pac-12 rival Stanford last season.
The word leaked last week that a Players Tribune piece was in the
works, outlining requests/demands by an unspecified number of Pac-12 football players who had communicated and discussed at
least the basic outline.
That piece, posted Sunday, is here.
In
addition, here are the previewing stories posted Saturday by ESPN and the Los Angeles Times.
The Players Tribune piece is impressive, extensive and idealistic. (To be
clear, "idealistic" is the ultimate praise, not an accusation of naivete.) It's reminiscent of another period,
one I wrote about in my roman a clef novel, The Witch's Season, when college football -- especially on the West Coast and in the Pacific 8 -- was being played on cauldron campuses and
to an extent reflected those times. The Players Tribune point-by-point
manifesto is a basis for discussion and, well, negotiation. As others have noted -- including Fox's Joel Klatt, the former
CU quarterback -- the list runs the gamut of credibility.
Said
Klatt via @joelklatt: "Some quality requests ... Some intersting asks ... some ridiculous demands. That is the nature
of every 'negotiation'."
Bottom line, one the league seems to have acknowledged: If it's deemed not safe, it's not safe.
Then college football must be shut down.
Unfortunately, the Players Tribune piece is signed only: "Players of the Pac-12."
That leaves
unanswered the question of how many players saw it, read it and endorsed it in advance. Twenty? Twelve hundred? Somewhere
in between?
There are indications, both in the Times and ESPN stories, that distribution was significantly
widespread -- but that needs to be specified with actual names, even virtual signatures. Responses to the hashtag #weareunited
are coming in as I type, but it would have been more effective if the list of leaders, signees and endorsers came with the
original "document."
If there was concern is of retribution, that's understandable, but somebody --
at least a council-type group -- would have to be part of any discussions with the league, anyway. To whatever extent the
league is willing to sincerely discuss it, rather than simply repeating that if the league plows on and the players aren't
confident it's sufficiently safe, they can opt out and keep their scholarships.
The University of Colorado is not mentioned. So perhaps pending
digging by those who cover the Buffs on a daily basis, or a series of social media declarations from players, we don't yet
know the depth of the CU players' involvement. (Feel free to point out to me those social media declarations, whether tied
to the hashtag or otherwise.) Again, and I can't emphasize this enough in this age, that is not a witch hunt, it's an effort
to understand the entire context of the Players
Tribune piece and the manifesto it lays out.
That
manifesto is impressive and understandable on the social justice and safety issues, and if it's conceded some clauses clearly
are crafted as expendable tradeoffs. I'm not going to run down it all.
Most important, of course, is the safety of the players in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the powers of college
football at times have come off -- I'm not saying it's right or fair -- as surprisingly cavalier about that issue.
The league tried to shoot down that notion in its Friday Zoom news conference announcement of its revised football schedule and plans, but it
lingers. Not playing the 2020 football season would be an economic catastrophe for athletic departments and all men's and
women's sports, and that's at (or near) the top of the list of concerns.
I will say that the request for 50 pecent of the revenue to go to the players is a non-starter. For one
thing, revenue already does go to the players in the forms of lucrative scholarships -- ask students piling up loans and/or
working three jobs if they would would be ecstatic to get a full ride -- and now also cost of attendance stipends and potentially
name, image, and likeness-related income. The latter would not come from the school, but still would be part of the equation.
This is maddening: When athletes or anyone else refuse to consider a full college scholarship to be significant compensation,
or not even worth injecting into the conversaton, it provides ammunition to the idiots who dismiss "student-athlete"
is an oxymoron.
Let the discussion begin.
terry@terryfrei.com
