Now we've all come to the agreement that we can work together, to really create something that should've been done a long time ago. “But it was amazing that it came through.
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“The series of events that transpired in two hours was honestly pretty insane,” he said of Sunday night. We wanted to change that.”īoles spoke with Yahoo Sports in the wee hours of Monday morning, after a whirlwind weekend. “Because every decision that was made thus far regarding the season, in each respective conference, had very little no player input.
“We just want to make sure players are being taken into account,” Boles said. We just want to play safely.”Īnd they want a voice. As college athletes, we put hours, we put years into honing our craft in our sport. “Or if a player opted out, that he or she didn't want to play. “There's kind of been this sentiment that if a player spoke out about wanting better procedures, better safety standards, that he didn't want to play,” Reynolds said. As Rencher tweeted: “All on the same team with this!”Īnd they clarified a misconception. What they undoubtedly healed, though, was that externally manufactured division, between two movements with similar aims. Boles likened their organizing to “assembl the pseudo-Avengers of college football at the last minute." Rencher described their statement as a “Hail Mary to win ‘the game’ hopefully.” Power 5 athletic directors reportedly held an emergency meeting Sunday.
Athletes still don’t have a formalized voice, no matter how loudly they speak. “It's not just Power 5 football, it needs to be Group of 5, Ivy League, the entire FCS, Division II, Division III football, basketball, soccer, softball, track and field, etc.” “And for me, personally, that representation needs to stretch across all sports and all divisions in college athletics,” Reynolds continued. “It definitely needs to happen.” And Reynolds: “I think everyone felt that was necessary, just to have representation. “We wanted to make sure players felt empowered, and had the opportunity to use their voice,” Boles said. But the players on the Zoom, Boles and Reynolds said, weren’t hesitant about calling for one. A union would shake college athletics to the core. The National College Players Association supported them too. “It was more so a statement that, if a player chose to, he could put out to support.” And many - football players and others, from Power 5 conferences and elsewhere - have. “This wasn't necessarily a statement that encompassed the feeling of all athletes,” Reynolds said. The words were not crafted with the input of every Power 5 football player.
And most notably, they wanted a players union. But they wanted universal COVID-19 protocols, and freedom for players to opt out, and eligibility guarantees. In around 30 minutes, they settled on the bullets. They needed bullet points, “something we can throw on a graphic, and make it easily distributable.” “We need to make this clear and concise,” Boles said they decided. Reynolds had prepared a preliminary statement. So the players, with representation from each Power 5 conference, gathered via Zoom. And they found, Reynolds said, that “what were saying was a similar message to what we were saying, just conveyed a little differently.” Michigan cornerback Hunter Reynolds, who’d led the Big Ten movement, spoke with Rencher individually. In reality, players realized, the two movements could blend into one. Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields were two of hundreds who shared a unified statement: "WeWantToPlay".