Hello and welcome to the player empowerment days of college football.
Players of the sport took to Twitter late Sunday night to promote two things: unity and the want to play football in 2020.
It started with the two most prominent players in college football with Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State’s Justin Fields posting a graphic with #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay. The phrases mimicked what the Pac-12 United movement was doing a week ago with demands on revenue sharing, mandated health and safety guidelines and guarantee eligibility and scholarships this year.
The players of the power-five have presented something similar with a twist: A College Football Players Association. Or a college football player union, to be exact.
Oklahoma presumed starting quarterback Spencer Rattler jumped on board with the movement alongside some of the other top, young players in the sport.
— Spencer Rattler (@SpencerRattler) August 10, 2020
Rattler has played in two games so far for Oklahoma, with each of those coming in mop up duty against South Dakota and LSU. He, though, has a social media following that’s grown to over 460,000 followers on Instagram and 80,000 followers on Twitter.
The redshirt freshman’s voice holds weight, and he is now in on the unionization of college football. The problem remains that these players are not employees and it will be a slippery slope to get to where they want, but this a major first step to players getting representation within their sport.
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