#WeWantToPlay — As conferences near football cancellation, student-athletes fight back

With reports circulating that the 2020 college football season is set to be canceled, the players fight back.

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The report came in not just setting the scene, but removing it completely.

While conferences like the Big Ten had set its standard for how a 2020 college football season could be played, players who have endured multiple days of fall camp across the Midwest and beyond had the rug pulled out from underneath them on Sunday, as Sports Illustrated reported that the Big Ten presidents were having a meeting which could decide the sport’s fate in the coming month.

There were minimal conflicting narratives that emerged, strictly in terms of deciphering whether or not a decision had been reached. Either way, the fall seems to be in dire straits.

So at this point, it’s more about the weapon to be used to do the damage rather than whether or not damage will be done.

That’s when something incredible happened, with much of it taking place in the early hours of Monday — the players fought back.

Across all of college football.

Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence is a surefire early first-round pick, if not the obvious No. 1 overall selection come the 2021 NFL Draft. He has nothing to gain by playing a 2020 football season. The same can be said of Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields.

Yet, when news starting trickling down that the Power Five, led by the Big Ten, is looking to preemptively end a season it had just overhauled and revamped just days ago, the most high-profile players in the land joined together to make their voices heard.

It started earlier on Sunday, with Lawrence’s excellent thread explaining why he feels it’s short-sighted to cancel college football this fall due to coronavirus concerns, given the alternatives.

But — at least for the conference in the Midwest in the Big Ten — it was a message sent too late.

That’s when Lawrence quickly went to work, echoing the voices already heard in the ‘united’ voices of the PAC-12 and Big Ten players, recruiting Washington State defensive lineman Dallas Hobbs after reportedly having a Zoom call with multiple player representatives from across all five power conferences in college football.

The result? #WeWantToPlay, a united front representing the players who want to proverbially — in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s penned Aaron Burr — to be in the room where it happens.

That’s a small sample size, but those are five premier players across the Power Five.

At the time of this writing, just one Michigan player has tweeted out the hashtag, but not with the graphic. But given that he and former Wolverines CB (now with Minnesota) Benjamin St-Juste are the main drivers behind the Big Ten United campaign, CB Hunter Reynolds weighing in adds to the united front across college football.

Given the NCAA’s struggle against players asserting themselves (see: the Ed O’Bannon case, Northwestern’s attempt to unionize and the current name, image, likeness legislation — which the NCAA is fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court), a college football-wide unionization effort is certainly its worst nightmare.

However, the governing entity certainly has culpability at the moment. It did nothing to assuage the fears or concerns of the student-athletes, conferences didn’t give players a seat at the table. It pushed them to train with no certainty to their immediate future.

We might be witnessing the death of amateurism, in real time. Assuredly there will be more twists and turns here, regardless if any of the major conferences pull the plug, given that they’ve been unwilling so far to let college athletes be in the room where it happens.