You quit or we don’t play. That is essentially what dozens of players on the University of Missouri football team told the president of the university. They had lost four straight games, five of their last six, including a 31-13 home loss to Mississippi State on Saturday night. But they won this one, with the New York Times reporting that
Racial tensions at the university had been escalating for weeks and
The threat made by the football players may or may not have been decisive but it is worth noting that if they had not played this Saturday, the University would have been on the hook for a million dollars to Brigham Young after forfeiting the game.
Big time college football is a powerful economic engine, and one suspects that this is a precedent and one that troubles the sleep of coaches, athletic directors, university presidents and boosters across the land.
