Missouri Introduces Legislature That Would Pull Scholarships From Any Athletes That Threaten To Strike

COLUMBIA — In reaction to Missouri football players who boycotted in November, two state representatives are taking action.

Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, sponsored a pre-filed bill on Friday that proposes revoking the athletics scholarship of any student athlete who “calls, incites, supports, or participates in any strike or concerted refusal to play a scheduled game.” Additionally, the bill calls for any member of a coaching staff who “encourages or enables a college athlete to engage” in such behavior to receive a fine from his or her institution of employment.

Brattin was out of his office and not immediately available for comment. The bill’s co-sponsor, Kurt Bahr, R-O’Fallon, said it is “obviously in reaction to the athletes who were saying they weren’t going to play to what they considered to be social issues on campus. I don’t think that is an appropriate response on their part.”

“The issue really is, they can have the freedom of speech (when they) like or don’t like something on campus,” Bahr said. “But if they’re going to receive state money, there are going to be ramifications.”

“We saw the university taking too timid of a response, so we want to encourage them to take a more forceful response,” Bahr said. “Forceful response doesn’t mean kicking everyone off the team and creating a new team. … We want to see better leadership from the leadership of our flagship university.”

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Annndddd now the other shoe drops for the Missouri football team. They had to have been expecting this – politicians, legislators and administrators waiting for everything to die down, then coming out of the woodwork to punish everyone involved and make sure it never, ever happens again.

The response? Passing legislation to ensure anyone who ever threatens a “strike” to not play football again will have their scholarship revoked, and any coach that supports them will be fined cash money.

First part is a little confusing, since scholarships aren’t state-funded – all athlete scholarships are paid independently through the Tiger Scholarship Fund. And the people in charge of this thing don’t really seem like they’ve worked out the logistics.

Even if the bill, which does not yet have a hearing scheduled, becomes a law, MU student-athlete scholarships are not state-funded. The Tiger Scholarship Fund pays for athletics scholarships.

According to the Missouri student-athlete handbook: “The University of Missouri does not receive state appropriated funds to operate its intercollegiate athletics programs, thus, similar to private business, the Mizzou Athletics Department must operate solely from what revenue it generates.”

Bahr said he doesn’t know how a law would be enforced, and that he’s never read the student-athlete handbook.

But whatever, it sounds scary.

The players obviously had some things to say about all this.

Former Missouri safety Ian Simon, a team captain and leader of the boycott movement among players, said such a reaction in the legislature doesn’t surprise him. He believes the boycott, in which many black college athletes flexed the power they hold, “scared some people.” Butler, in a Facebook post Monday, called the proposed legislation “anti-Black tactics.”

Simon said he and some teammates considered before the boycott whether their scholarships would be revoked. Even if the bill does become a law, Simon said, Missouri players would still take a stand on social issues — and boycott — if they felt it necessary.

“They want to call us student-athletes, but they keep us out of the student part of it,” Simon said. “I’m more than just a football player. … As soon as we’re done playing at the University of Missouri, the University of Missouri does not care about us anymore. We are not their responsibility. … Our sport is just a small part of who we are.”

Let’s just hope for all parties involved we don’t actually have to find out. That everyone can just get along and happily go to school and play football. No more dumb racism, no more poop swastikas, no more safe spaces, no more hunger strikes from rich kids whose parents are millionaire business owners and grew up extremely privileged in the suburbs.