Missouri Football Players Were Told By Protesters "You don't realize how much power you have"

Last night’s announcement by members of the University of Missouri football team that they would boycott team activities until the University System President resigned had been in the works for four days.

The Columbia Missourian has a timeline of the events leading up to the announcement on social media. The details of the incidents that triggered the protests had been developing all fall semester. The football team involvement in protests began when a player (who was unidentified by the protest members speaking with the Missourian) met with Concerned Student 1950 leaders on Wednesday, to discuss how they could get involved. The idea of a boycott of football activities was immediately mentioned by the player.

The next three days involved discussions with the black football players on the team about what to do. Some expressed whether they could have an impact in a meeting. “We were telling them, ‘You don’t realize how much power you have,'” according to Shelby Parnell, one of the protest leaders.

A decision was reached on Saturday, and according to the Missourian, the strength and conditioning coach, Pat Ivey, delivered the message to the protesters, along with former player Sean Coffey.

However, some players were having second thoughts, and another meeting was held between the original 11 members of Concerned Student 1950 and the football team members at about 6 p.m. on Saturday. When that meeting concluded, the pictures with the team expressing support and announcing the boycott began emerging.

According to Will Jarvis of the Maneater, only 26 of the 84 scholarship players are not Caucasian. There is no clear statement as to the number of players who are participating in the protest (more than 30 were included in the photo last night), but star defensive end Charles Harris tweeted out that there was no racial division and the team was united.

If true, than they do have a tremendous amount of power. Missouri is next scheduled to play BYU in a game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on Saturday, November 14th. The next 48 hours are going to be very interesting in Columbia, Missouri.