Five days after proposing legislation last month, House Bill 1753, which aimed to stymie the activism of student-athletes by terminating the scholarships of student-athletes who refused to play for any other reason than injury and fining coaches that support activist-athletes, Republican and Missouri State Rep. Rick Brattin pulled the legislation from consideration. The bill was initially prompted by the threat of Black football players at the University of Missouri in November to boycott the remainder of the school’s football contests if the school’s administration did not begin to immediately address Black students’ longstanding grievances concerning discrimination on campus.
Within days, the university’s president and the state system’s university chancellor, both of whom were accused of being racially insensitive, were pressured into resigning. The activist-athletes’ leverage hinged upon the fact that their participation in football garnered the university millions of dollars in revenue and free national publicity and that a boycott would result in the university owing millions of dollars to its athletic partners, create a deficit in funding for its other athletic teams, and generate a greater spotlight on the discrimination that Black students at the school are currently challenging. Brattin and the bill’s co-sponsor, Kurt Bahr, also a Republican, sought to curb the power of Black activist-athletes.
Dr. Dexter Blackman
In the age of #BlackLivesMatter, if the bill succeeded, it would likely spark Black student-athletes at other schools to protest in solidarity with the athletes at Mizzou or to take action against the discrimination they endure at the universities they attend, thus threatening to disrupt the revenue produced by sports at those schools.
The NCAA and athletic departments across the country are fearful of such a scenario unfolding. Last month, CBS Sports reported that more than 25 universities earned more than $100 million in sports revenues in 2015. Black student-athletes are responsible directly and indirectly for the vast majority of that revenue.
Blacks, despite being only approximately 13 percent of the nation’s population, compose more than 50 percent of the student-athletes on football and basketball scholarships at Division I schools. Those two sports, through TV broadcasting revenue, attendance, and jersey and apparel sales, produce the bulk of sports revenue for most universities. Those sources of revenue usually pay the bills for universities’ other intercollegiate sports, which historically have lagged in popularity and rarely generate enough revenue to remain self-supporting. A boycott by Black student-athletes could financially cripple all of intercollegiate sports.
Most athletic departments and administrations understand as much and it is influencing their stance on activist-athletes. At the annual IMG Intercollegiate Athletic Forum last month, several athletic directors suggested that they welcomed the activism of student-athletes because it moved both their campuses and society forward. Their position is a far cry from athletic administers who, until a decade ago, often suspended and condemned athletes whose protests disrupted sports or seemed to contradict general patriotic public opinion. They could generally count on receiving support from mainstream sports reporters who traditionally argued that politics had no place in sport and that sports, especially the integration of team sports, had helped moved the nation toward racial equality.
