By ALEX AGUEROS
Sports Editor
(digitalBURG) — Football season’s ability to turn the news cycle is incredible. Even in an otherwise mild scene football-wise (there are about three good NFL teams right now, and the college football rankings just got shuffled like a deck of cards because, who cares?) the sport manages to dominate headlines and conversation around the nation. Tom Brady. Greg Hardy. A head trauma epidemic. Mizzou.
“What’s going on at Mizzou?” is an odd question for a 4-5 football team, but, right now, it’s not who’s winning, but what’s happening.
This week, University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe resigned and MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin stepped down to a lesser role after weeks-long campus protests gained support from the Tigers football team in the form of a potential boycott of Saturday’s game.
Protesters said incidents of racists insulting and intimidating black students, including the student body president, had fallen on deaf ears. Graduate student Jonathan Butler led protesters by holding a hunger strike until Wolfe was gone.
It’s clear the revenue generated by SEC football was the final straw in kicking Wolfe out. Judging by his cold, tone-deaf response to protesters promising a diversity plan in April, the football money might’ve been the only factor in his removal.
Isn’t it ironic, that if the Tiger’s football team were paid employees bound to a collective bargaining agreement, a boycott would be less of a threat? It’s interesting to consider the power these laborers have — enough to boot the president — and the power other programs may have around the nation.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King Jr. said. And, after Wolfe’s resignation, it feels like more of a promise than a warning. Just look at the hordes of adult crybabies calling to nix the student-athlete’s scholarships. Because human rights were threatened, Wolfe’s right to his job was, and so was your right to a football game.
It’s far from a fair trade, and a reminder of the steep uphill climb those facing discrimination have. Consider the fact that some students don’t feel safe going to class, and the strength our fellow students are showing just 90 minutes down the road. Sincere congratulations to Missouri football’s first victory in more than a month.