Another of my sports tribalisms also dating to that period of my life, and more particularly my employment while there, is to root for any Kansas Jayhawks team. I don't watch football, as I've made painfully clear, but any other team -- baseball, soccer, volleyball, and of course basketball -- I'll get all up for, even against teams I'd otherwise like. And with sporting tribalisms comes not only being aligned with your team, but also being aligned against their rivals, or "enemies" if you want to push things.
Therefore, I have a great deal of antipathy towards the University of Missouri Tigers. Kansas and Missouri hold the bitterest (and that really is the best word, if possibly a little weak, to describe the relationship) rivalry between schools whose teams really don't play each other any more. (That's a whole other story, too long to relate here.)
That said, I really have to watch Missouri's football team this week. Possibly even literally, despite the afore-linked practice of not watching football.
At least thirty-two members of Missouri's football team have gone on strike. This has nothing to do with the effort to unionize college athletes that flared up at Northwestern recently; in this case, the players are on strike until, according to some reports, the university's president resigns.
You can read any of the linked articles for more on the background of racist incidents at the university that have led up to this decision. At this point the situation is such that one Mizzou student, Jonathan Butler, has gone on a hunger strike towards the same ends.
This has the potential to be a fascinating situation.
After all, thirty-two players does not a football team make, but it does make up a pretty good chunk of a college roster. How does the team react?
As a result, it is of particular interest to see this report, on ESPN.com, in which Mizzou's coach Gary Pinkel is quoted prominently. Earlier versions of the story were ambiguous as to Pinkel's intent in stating that:
Later versions of the ESPN story, as linked above, elaborate. The team did not practice today, and is unlikely to practice again, until Butler's hunger strike is over. Pinkel and Mizzou's athletic director Mack Rhoades issued that statement, although in this case the players are described as unlikely to return to practice before Butler resumes taking food. Pinkel never came off as a particularly enlightened individual (but that could just be my Jayhawk tribalism talking), but at least for the moment he seems to be behind his players, even if they are potentially creating an explosive situation for the team and university.
Of course, that unity is apparently not as solid as Pinkel might suggest, and even his apparent support for those players is being undermined -- anonymously, of course.
All sorts of questions come to the fore, then. Even if Pinkel continues to support his striking players publicly, how are Mizzou fans (not to mention those disunited players) going to react? Even the most enlightened of college football fans tend to be a little bit bonkers where the interruption of their sacred Saturday rituals is concerned. How do they react if or when their team shows up for Saturday with a reduced roster, or doesn't show up at all? This Saturday the team is scheduled to play against BYU in Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium, a game probably intended to make up for the old Kansas-Mizzou game that used to be played there; it's meant to be a big-numbers money game and to try to keep Mizzou a toehold in KC, which somewhat leans towards KU in its affections. University officials are gonna be ticked if this game goes down in flames (of course the university's top official is the one at the center of the controversy), and the folks who run Arrowhead probably won't be thrilled either.
Though playing out-of-conference this weekend, Missouri is a member of the Southeastern Conference. It's a relatively new member, only having bolted from the Big 12 in 2011 or so. How likely is its new home conference to be happy with this situation? This is a conference that has its own race issues in some of its schools, and even the most stalwart self-described progressives can be made to look supremely silly and dependent when it comes to their college football passions. How will a conference -- and yes, this conference in particular (deal with it, people) -- respond if the players' stand ends up disrupting the conference's sacred Saturday rituals?
Hopefully the situation is resolved, with Butler able to take meals, the players able to play, some measure of justice done, and me able to avoid watching as usual. The issues boiling at Missouri are far more important than a football game, but I wonder how many people who plan to be at Arrowhead Saturday actually get that.
For me, of course, there's another angle at play. If blatant racial bigotry isn't enough to convince otherwise intelligent and justice-loving folk that a football game isn't the end-all and be-all of their weekend, then I have very little hope of ever making headway in getting such intelligent and life-loving folk to consider that their sacred Saturday rituals may need some modification to keep from causing the brain trauma that keeps showing up posthumously in football players, even those who never get near the NFL.
But damn, that tribalism is fierce. And to be crass, it's quite capable of making otherwise intelligent and learned and thoughtful people act very stupid, or at least quite against their declared interests. We anoint ourselves "(fill-in-the-blank) Nation." We say things like "we won," when we never got anywhere the field or court or rink, and would quite likely be dead or maimed if we did. And once we get swept up in or even addicted to that sensation, that powerful or even primitive tribal bond, how much chance do we have of stepping back and assessing and acting on our allegiance logically, or (more to the point) transcending that allegiance if need be when justice or lives or real life are at stake? Can we? Will we?
Mind you, Mizzou is hardly alone in this...
As long as that is so, I wonder if Missouri's striking football players have any chance at all. Or any university's unknowing brain-trauma victims, for that matter.
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