College football players find economic power. Now what?

He left just two days after more than 30 of the school’s football players announced they would boycott games unless he was ousted for not taking meaningful steps to address concerns about racism on campus. Boycotting a single game could have smacked the university with a $1 million penalty.

Did college football players just realize they have economic muscle and can flex it on lots of issues, including ones that relate to their own health and financial well being?

Yeah.

And now that those workers know they have power, the business of major college sports – or at least the high-dollar ones of football and basketball – is sure to change.

Ramogi Huma, a UCLA linebacker in the 1990s and now president of the National College Players Association, recently emailed a newsletter to thousands of current and former athletes to make sure they get the significance of the Missouri moment and what it might portend.

“Nothing happens in a vacuum,” Huma told me. “College athletes nationwide are paying attention.”

The likelihood of more boycotts increased dramatically in the wake of Missouri, Huma said.

Others also see a path to tap into players’ star and brand power more often.

Systemic change

“What is unique is those student athletes being able to affect such systemic change so quickly,” said Colin Seeberger, a spokesman for Young Invincibles, a group that advocates for millennials and college students. “It should really be a signal to students organizing on other campuses on the state or federal level to use them as an ally.”

The football players at Missouri had some advantages, even if they didn’t fully realize it at first.

Anger had been building for weeks on campus (and might well have eventually led to the president's resignation anyway). A grad student had launched a hunger strike. The team's head coach tacitly supported the players' actions. The players were pushing for change that wasn't just for themselves. Enough of them joined it to make it difficult for the school to push back. And the players had immediate financial leverage: their next game was only a week away.

Not every fight football players might wage in the future will have the same edge.

College players throughout the nation have long known that boycotts are an option. It’s just that they rarely launched one. I’m sure they feared doing so would risk their scholarships or NFL prospects. Sometimes, coaches may have talked them out of the idea.

Which brings me to Vince Dooley, who was head football coach when the University of Georgia won a national championship.

Dooley told me he nearly led a boycott of practices when he was quarterback at Auburn in 1953.

Players were incensed when coaches reneged on a promise of watches and jackets for players before the Gator Bowl. The issue, Dooley concedes, looks minor now compared to the concerns about racism at Missouri. His teammates agreed he should go talk to the coach, who agreed to make good on the goods.

Student athletes “have every right to express themselves,” Dooley said. “It is also incumbent upon anybody in a position of authority, whether coaches or administrators, to take seriously some concerns.”

Current UGA coach Mark Richt told AJC reporter Chip Towers much the same this week: "If there's an injustice of some kind or something that needs to be changed, when it's done the right way, it can be very effective. So I think that's true of our student-athletes, of students in general, of people in general. That's just the way it works and I think it's good."

Financial oomph

One thing that's changed over the last decade is the financial oomph of the football programs. Combined, they pull in more than $3 billion a year for schools, a figure that doesn't fully account for the billions more made by some TV networks and brands tied to the teams. For colleges it's a way to woo donors, land TV airtime and attract new students.

The formula often rests on the heritage and tradition of big-name programs. But it also relies on big-name players and coaches. The coaches get big pay. The athletes don’t.

I know: the stars get a free education, swank practice facilities and good food. And, I guess, you could say, free preparation for the tiny fraction who make it to the NFL.

But it would be nuts to think that players who get battered every Saturday wouldn’t want more, like guarantees to cover long-term health issues tied to their college play. This is America, land of the sort-of-free-market, where we’re all supposed to strive for more.

Will there be anarchy if guys barely out of high school have power over college leaders with long tenures and whistles or Ph.D.’s?

I’m sure it will be messy.

I suspect I won’t like college football players becoming a bit more like the pros. And I know I’ll choke over the potential for ticket prices to rise if the cost of running football programs grows.

But college players asserting some rightful economic power is long overdue.