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Mr. Ed -> RE: Gopher Football (12/17/2016 9:18:37 PM)
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At 1:30 a.m. Saturday, the Gophers were ready to end their boycott of University of Minnesota football. In two hours in the middle of the night, their resolve to remove themselves from the playing field in protest had fallen apart.
A group text went out: “Players-only meeting 6 a.m.” Many of them didn’t sleep.
At 9 a.m., bleary-eyed and exhausted, the Gophers’ senior leaders walked back into a campus building and announced they were lifting the boycott.
“As a team, we understand that what has occurred these past few days, and playing football for the University of Minnesota, is larger than just us,” senior receiver Drew Wolitarsky said, reading from a two-page, typed statement.
As he read those words, the Gophers stopped just hours short from becoming the first college football team to back out of a bowl game in protest. That did not happen, several sources told the Star Tribune on Saturday, because the painful details of an 80-page report from an investigation of an alleged sexual assault — revealed to most players for the first time late Friday — broke the boycott’s resolve.
Saturday morning’s announcement was a dramatic reversal from Friday night. Shortly after 9 p.m., most players exited the football facility along snow-clogged 15th Avenue, defiant and convinced the bowl boycott would stand.
After some productive and volatile meetings with university President Eric Kaler, the Gophers players knew he wouldn’t meet their demand to lift the 10 player suspensions that stemmed from an alleged Sept. 2 sexual assault and investigation. They were staring down a Saturday deadline to follow through on backing out of the Dec. 27 Holiday Bowl in San Diego.
But Wolitarsky, Gaelin Elmore, Mitch Leidner and the rest of the seniors remained cloistered inside, contemplating alternatives, thinking about a “game-changing” 80-page university investigation report on the incident that most of them had just read for the first time.
‘Narrative’ changes
The university’s Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action report came into wide public view Friday afternoon when it was first obtained and published by KSTP-TV. The report described in deep detail how a female student and more than 10 men were involved in an incident in the early morning of Sept. 2, hours after the Gophers’ first game of the season.
The EOAA report, the result of the school’s federally mandated investigation of the alleged sexual assault, was not seen by a vast majority of the players until Friday evening, sources said.
Sources said the release of the report and the players getting a chance to read the results of the investigation were the biggest factors in the decision to end the boycott. “Once they read the report,” one source said, the “narrative” of the boycott changed.
When the players launched their boycott, they signaled their anger at Kaler and athletic director Mark Coyle for not being more forthcoming with the reasons the 10 players had been suspended.
The EOAA recommended expulsion for Ray Buford, Carlton Djam, KiAnte Hardin, Dior Johnson and Tamarion Johnson; one-year suspensions from the university for Seth Green, Kobe McCrary, Mark Williams and Antoine Winfield Jr., and probation for Antonio Shenault.
Lee Hutton, the attorney for all 10 players, has already filed their appeals.
According to sources, the seniors tried getting Kaler to lift the penalties for Green, McCrary, Williams, Winfield and Shenault.
Late Friday night, the seniors felt like they were getting close to a compromise on that issue, but it was shot down in a vote before the whole team, sources said.
With the team at an impasse, one of the 10 suspended players spoke up in a meeting. According to one source, the suspended player said, “We appreciate all of you for standing up for us, and we still feel like we’ve been wronged [by the university]. But we don’t want 102 [players] to take the fall for us five.”
The motivation to end the boycott grew. Clarity had come for many in the form of the EOAA report, and player support to end the boycott put in motion a change in plans. Many players stayed up, the dialogue continued and they gathered for a Saturday team meeting before dawn.
A vote occurred, sources told the Star Tribune, leading to Saturday morning’s announcement.
Man in the middle
At the announcement, Wolitarsky again found himself at center stage, as a handful of Gophers representing their teammates faced media members who had scrambled through the Saturday morning snow piles to get to campus.
Before the players launched their boycott, they elected Wolitarsky as their spokesman. Besides being their leading receiver, he’s also wrapping up his English degree.
“You will have to bear with us,” Wolitarsky said Saturday. “We’ve been up for 30-plus hours — lot of caffeine.”
Wolitarsky also had read the team’s original boycott announcement Thursday evening, and he drew much of the national criticism from those who felt the players were condoning sexual violence.
According to people close to the situation, Wolitarsky was shaken by the criticism, stressed and crying at times. He was especially torn after reading the 80-page report.
“I learned a lot from these past couple days,” Wolitarsky said. “There are no right choices. There are no decisions that do not affect somebody else. This process has been extremely difficult, and I’m sure you all know how stressful this has been for everybody involved.”
By Saturday, in words Wolitarsky had used his writing touch to shape, he made clear how the players feel about sexual violence.
“Let me first state so there is no misperception: sexual harassment and violence against women have no place on this campus, on our team, in our society and at no time is it ever condoned,” he said. “There is only one acceptable way to treat all women and all men, and that is with the utmost respect at all times.”
Leadership issue
The players took biggest issue with “due process” and “communication.”
“We’re disappointed at the lack of communication” on the part of school leaders, Wolitarsky said, reading from the players’ statement.
“After many hours of discussion within our team, and after speaking with President Kaler, it became clear that our original request of having the 10 suspensions overturned was not going to happen,” the statement read.
Kaler followed the players’ announcement, saying he was pleased with the players’ decision to drop the boycott, as well as their spoken stance against sexual violence.
“I think the statement by the students today around support for victims of sexual assault is important,” Kaler said. “I will continue to amplify the fact that the football team action was in support of their teammates, it was not in support of sexual violence.”
Coyle added: “This is an educational moment. The great thing about college campuses is you can have different opinions and can express those opinions. But you have to be respectful during that process. This was a learning experience for all of us.”
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