It’s ironic that University of Missouri athletes played such a pivotal role in toppling the university’s president and chancellor.
For decades, college presidents have embraced big-time athletics to build their institutions. Football and basketball -- even track and field -- proved to be crowd-pleasers, and such sports are now synonymous with college in the public eye.
By the late 1960s, athletes themselves had realized that college sports could be a used to draw attention to a cause and exert pressure to bring about change. These athletes—and other college students—threatened to boycott games and blow up stadiums, unless universities developed black studies departments, ended discriminatory practices in on-campus housing, and pushed for greater integration for black students within the larger community.
This threat to the hallowed traditions of the gridiron so incensed alumni and community members that they ratcheted up the pressure on university leaders to end the boycotts.
A generation before these protests, presidents had harnessed the power of athletics to build their institutions. Now athletes are increasingly turning that power on the institutions that college sports helped to build. Mizzou’s former president probably doesn’t take any comfort in that irony.
And college presidents across the country probably are not looking forward to the day when athletes use their power to increase their standing in the university and to press for a greater share of the profits of big-time athletics.
I’m Marc VanOverbeke, and that’s my perspective