On the Missouri Earthquake

The big news involves the resignation of the University of Missouri president due to the threatened boycott of the Mizzou-BYU football game this coming Saturday. While those from outside of this country would look askance at this development and wonder about the sanity of our society, I would say that this is a uniquely American problem that was solved, rightly or wrongly, in a very American fashion.

There are many questions rears up in this particular incidence.

Why did the president wait so long to address the issues that had always been present? Was it a great white father paternalistic streak? Was it an attitude of: “I can’t address every single grievance that every minority group has in regard to their university experience”. Since he was a business leader prior to taking over the reins of Mizzou and not an academic, did he feel like he could ignore dissent amongst the ranks because he has always been able to ignore them as a president of a company? Did the

Some would have you believe that it was over the moment the athletes threatened to boycott the game. I believe that the turning point came when Gary Pinkel and the AD, Mack Rhoades decided to back the athletes. This is paramount to mutiny in a flagship institution. Which brings up the interesting question of who is in charge of the asylum; and once they have had a taste of their own powers, would the Missouri athletic department throw their weight around with the university system. The attendant question is: why did they decide on this course of action? These massively profitable institutions are not a ragtag band of ne’er do wells, there is a very strict hierarchy of command, the student athletes are at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and for the powers of the athletic department to support their cause indicates that they too saw something severely wrong with the state of Columbia Missouri. Another question is: will they, the football coach and AD, do it again?

Another interesting question is why? Why did this motivate a previously docile but potentially powerful group as the athletes decide that now is the time, this was the time? What made them risk their scholarships in support for a cause?

A friend of mine commented that money talks. Of course it does, except that in this instance, the people who leveraged that money are not boosters or wealthy alums, but the worker bees, the ones who are the labor in this particular business model.  That is extraordinary.

Georgia Tech forced the resignation of a very unpopular president by virtue of the alums turning off the faucet on their donations until the president resigned. These students don’t have near the clout of the alums, until Pinkel and Rhoades gave them that clout.

Remember that a mere five years ago, college athletes were the silent labor pool that really had no say in the governance of their own lives, let alone the governance of their universities. While the O’bannon case and the Northwestern University case may have changed some perception, the labor pool is still quite distant from being the driver of the massive economy that is college football and basketball.

The other question that pops up is whether the football and basketball athletes would ever think about throwing their newfound weight around again at the University of Missouri, throw tantrums because they wanted better shoes etc.  Not likely, these guys were enabled by their coaches and their administration. The really interesting question is if all the Power 5 football players decided to boycott the playoff games until they got paid. It could happen, it’s not likely, but it could happen.