Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — reflecting on the lessons he learned from the movement in Albany, Georgia, in the early 1960s — said that one mistake they made was trying to desegregate the entire town (schools, parks, restaurants, stores, theaters, hotels, pools, etc.) at once instead of targeting one sector where they had particularly strong leverage.
Dr. Marcus Bright
This lesson is applicable to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) call for Black student-athletes to rethink attending public colleges and universities in Florida to continue their careers in response to the decision of the Florida State Legislature and governor to prohibit expenditures on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
I applaud the NAACP for the sentiment behind taking an aggressive stance against the dismantling of DEI programs. I believe that the call to boycott athletics programs at Florida public colleges and universities should be modified to specifically target the football teams at the University of Florida (UF) and Florida State University (FSU). One reason for this is that these specific programs generate the most revenue and their respective head coaches, Billy Napier and Mike Norvell, are the highest paid public employees in the state.
Also, these two football programs have enormous fan bases and hold a very special place in the hearts and minds of many Floridians. For example, the plight of the FSU football team was taken so seriously that the upper echelon of the Florida’s political leadership at the state and federal level expressed outrage and took official action in response to their exclusion from the College Football Playoff. The Seminoles were not chosen to participate in the four-team playoff despite being an undefeated Power 5 conference team. Two one loss teams, Texas and Alabama, were chosen instead.
This exclusion prompted outrage from many across the state including prominent government officials. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody launched an antitrust investigation into the College Football Playoff. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott sent a letter to the College Football Playoff committee that stated, “while I doubt the committee’s decision will be reversed to rightly reward FSU for its hard-fought, undefeated season as the committee has done for other undefeated Power Five conference champions in recent years, I do believe that total transparency regarding how this decision was reached would do tremendous good for the Committee, the CFP as a whole, and the college football community.”
Both football programs have been fueled primarily by the talent of Black student-athletes. They hold an incredible amount of leverage as it pertains to the success of the programs and the millions of dollars that they produce annually. I contend that this is the time for this leverage to be used for the broader benefit of the community at-large.
