Jeffries, the Ohio State professor, said that college athletes could soon consider their place as cogs in a machine, in the same way that a handful of WNBA, NBA, and Major League Baseball players have chosen not to return. when the plot of their leagues is restarted during the pandemic. .
And perhaps the Arizona players are a start.
“These are kids who play with broken bones, concussions, that’s the mindset of the professional athlete, even if they don’t pay you,” he said. “But I wonder, right now, if we are very close to having a serious reckoning with race and college sports. It is not a great leap for an athlete to say, “Do you value my humanity and are you going to put me in this situation?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, especially as these conversations about the life and dignity and worth of blacks continue, and are increasingly captured and articulated by college athletes, that if Covid cases continue to escalate at sports facilities, we hear people say, ‘no, this doesn’t make any sense.’
Hawkins, the Houston professor, said keeping up with football given recent data on asymptomatic spread, rising infection rates among college-age adults and outbreaks among teams “is anti-intellectualism at its best. “
Still, he called Morehouse’s decision to suspend football “brave” and “profound” because sport supports the economic and cultural foundations of many universities.
“So it is provocative to say, ‘no, we are not going to do this, we will survive, we will recover,'” said Hawkins, who spent 20 years teaching in Georgia, a power in the Southeast Conference. “It is sad when the economic piece triumphs over the health and well-being of the students, but that is capitalism: exploiting the workforce. So an important piece is that it took an HBCU to make this decision. If a school like Alabama or Georgia took the initiative, it would be an incredible step. “
