The 100-Yard Journey

by Gary Pinkel

  From that point, I just wanted to finish the season strong and get to a bowl game. It was important to me that we end the season the right way.

  • • •

  After our bye week we played Mississippi State at home on a Thursday night, November 5. Our offense finally scored some points, but our defense had an off night. Dak Prescott, Mississippi State’s outstanding senior quarterback, was too much for us to stop. A year later he’d lead to the Dallas Cowboys to the NFL playoffs. We lost 31–13.

  With that Thursday night game, we didn’t play on Saturday. I was at our house at the Lake of the Ozarks in the evening watching a James Bond movie with Missy when I got a phone call. It was Ian Simon, a senior safety and co-captain on our team. He was with a group of teammates gathered on campus. I could tell this was not going to be a normal phone call, though it was not a normal time on our campus.

  During the fall semester there were some racially charged incidents on campus that had sparked a protest by a group of African American students that called themselves Concerned Student 1950, which was a reference to the year Mizzou admitted its first black student. I was aware that there were some rallies on campus, but I didn’t know many details. Once the season has started, our attention is focused on football. The protest group was upset about equality issues on campus and delivered a list of ideas and demands to Tim Wolfe, the university system president, one of which was his immediate removal from office. One of the group’s leaders, a graduate student named Jonathan Butler, had started a hunger strike in connection with the list of demands.

  Some of our African American players had learned about the protest group and spent some time with Jonathan Butler. They called me because they were scared. They were watching him go through this hunger strike and wanted to help him. Ian passed the phone around and let me talk to a few players. Charles Harris was there and Anthony Sherrils, too. They were all emotional. Some of them were crying. The players were on campus. More teammates joined them there. In their eyes, they had a kid starving and they wanted to save him.

  It reached the point where they told me they were thinking about backing this guy by not playing our next game. We were scheduled to play Brigham Young in Kansas City at Arrowhead Stadium the following Saturday. The players wanted to announce a boycott of team activities—and they wanted to do it now so the situation would get resolved by the next day, Sunday, or Monday morning and they could play their game. They were genuinely afraid this guy was going to die. This was their sacrifice. They couldn’t live with themselves if he died and they didn’t do anything to help him.

  That’s a phone call I wasn’t expecting.

  I listened, but then I had to talk. “No, you guys can’t do that,” I said. “I get that you want to help this guy, but this isn’t the solution.” There was something else important I had to ask. “Are you sure you’re not getting played here?” I was concerned they were being exploited because of their status on campus. But I knew these kids well. These weren’t troublemakers. Ian and Charles were two leaders in our program. These kids didn’t call me demanding that campus leaders address all these agenda items. When they talked to me, they were only concerned about the student eating and not dying. Was he really going to die in a matter of days if he didn’t eat? Maybe not, but none of that mattered at the time to my players. This is what they believed.

  My next impulse was to buy time. I had to talk to my boss, but I also needed the players to wait before they made any decision. I wanted to have a team meeting the next morning. It was important that we meet in person to discuss all of these issues and concerns. I told them, “Before you make any announcement, we have to meet tomorrow morning.”

  “We want to help this guy, Coach.”

  I had to talk to Mack Rhoades, and we agreed to talk later. I hung up with the players. I called Mack over and over again. He was in his office but had his phone turned off.

  In all the years of being a head coach, there was a procedure I followed when we had a serious personnel problem on our team. I had to let the A.D. know what was happening and he’d immediately alert the chancellor and president. Then we’d discuss possible solutions and come up with a decision about how to handle the situation. My boss, the athletic director, made the final decision. I always followed the chain of command. This situation was no different.

  Finally, I got in touch with Mack and told him what was happening. We were on the same page. Mack made his point clear. He didn’t hesitate. He knew this was a tough call, but we had to address it right away.

  “We have to support our players,” Mack said. I don’t know what I would have done if Mack said we couldn’t support the players. I would like to think I would have still supported them, but it never reached that point.

  Ian called me back and said they were going to announce a boycott.

  “The reason why,” he said, “is if this kid dies Tuesday, Coach, and we didn’t do anything for him, then we couldn’t live with ourselves. That’s where we are with this.”

  We were hoping and praying this would get resolved in 48 hours. The players didn’t want to miss the game. That’s why they believed they had to act Saturday night and couldn’t push off their decision. The sooner they acted, the sooner the hunger strike would end. That was their belief.

  For me, it was a helpless feeling. But I loved my players. And I loved that they felt compassion and respect for others. I told them I still wanted to meet as a team the next morning.

  After we spoke, the players took a photo of the group of 31 black players surrounding Jonathan Butler, some with their arms linked together. Several players along with the Legion of Black Collegians attached the photo to tweets with a message saying they would no longer participate in any football-related activities until President Wolfe resigned or was removed from office.

  That’s not what we talked about on the phone. That conversation was about the hunger strike. We would have to discuss it more the next day.

  We met the next day at the team facility, almost all of our players and our staff along with Mack. We sat down in the dining hall for more than an hour. Mack asked the players to explain what led to the boycott. The players involved stood up and explained their reasons. They brought up some valid points about ways our campus could improve experiences for African American students. It was a positive, healthy dialogue. I told the players, “For us, this is about saving this kid. This isn’t about agenda.” Mack made our overall message very clear. He asked the players, “When is this over?” Charles Harris answered, “When he eats.”

  This boycott wasn’t contingent on any demands placed on the university. The players agreed. The hunger strike was tied to the protest group’s demands, so it’s easy to make the connection that the boycott was tied to the agenda, but that’s not what we talked about with the players. We were not making any political statements. We didn’t even discuss the president. We didn’t discuss any other demands the protest group wanted the university to address. This was about ending the hunger strike and nothing else. Once we made that point clear, the rest of the players gave their support.

  Our players signed multiple agreements in terms of compliance regulations, privacy rights, and other student-athlete provisions when they enrolled at Mizzou and joined the football program. They’re not required to sign any agreement that says they’re obligated to participate in team activities or they would risk losing their scholarship. If they had to sign a clause like that, maybe this would have unfolded differently. In the heat of the moment, we could have been able to say, “We can’t do this, guys.” During the meeting, one of the players asked if they were going to lose their scholarships over this. Mack said no. Right or wrong, there was no athletic department policy in place that could cost them their scholarship for boycotting games.

  At the end of the meeting, the players who led the boycott wanted to take a team photograph to show we were united. Some people were
resistant, but we took the photo. We posted the photo from my Twitter account along with the message, “The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players.” But that wasn’t all. The media assistant who handled my social media accounts was an outstanding staff member who did a remarkable job for us for several years, but a mistake was made this one time. The hashtag #ConcernedStudent1950 was added to the end of my tweet. Nobody noticed initially. Then everybody noticed. The hashtag connected me and our team to the protest group and its list of demands. That’s exactly what we were trying to avoid. I didn’t think it would have the impact it did, but I could understand how it would upset people. There was some symbolism there—unintended symbolism. We made the point as a team that we weren’t invested in the agenda. But then the tweet came out and the protest group’s name was right there on my account. We didn’t make many mistakes like that publicly, but that was a big one. Once it was tweeted, there was nothing we could do. We could have deleted the tweet, but the damage was already done. I’m not sure what we could have done differently. Mack was extremely upset.

  I anticipated negative reaction. Whenever you’re dealing with issues of race, there’s a very polarizing reaction. When things like this happen, it brings out the very best in people and often the very worst. A lot of the worst came climbing out of the rocks in swarms to criticize me and our program. But I knew we had to support our kids, who in their hearts believed they were doing the right thing.

  We canceled our Sunday practice. For our players, Mondays were always an off day other than meetings and media obligations. If the issue on campus wasn’t resolved by Tuesday, we thought our players might try to work out something and return to practice by Tuesday.

  As a staff we discussed contingencies. How many players do we need to have a practice? How many would we need for a game? We tossed a lot of ideas back and forth without knowing when the boycott would end. If we don’t practice Tuesday, when’s the latest we can make a decision on the game? Can we play if we only practice on Wednesday and Thursday? The school would also be responsible for a costly buyout to BYU if we had to cancel the game.

  On Monday morning, President Wolfe stepped down. The hunger strike ended and our players canceled the boycott.

  We had to activate our plan. We didn’t have meetings that Monday afternoon but instead had a press conference, just Mack and me, which was attended by the local media and outlets from around the country. National media showed up in droves that week and thought our campus was going to riot. Nothing like that ever happened. The satellite trucks and cable programs eventually went home.

  On Tuesday, we held our regular 7:00 am meeting and got back to work. We had to focus as best we could. Once we reached Tuesday, everything was completely back to normal. For a few days, at least.

  If I had to do it all over again, I’m not sure what I could have done differently. The football staff and other Mizzou athletic programs would surely struggle recruiting African American players had this unfolded differently. At that point I had already decided to retire at the end of the season, but I still cared about the future of the program. I didn’t want to see what we built left in ruins.

  We were 4–5 when the players announced the boycott with three games to play. The season wasn’t lost, but by our standards it was already a disappointing year. If we were 8–1 or 7–2 and in the hunt for the SEC East, would the players have still staged the boycott? I would like to think so. It wasn’t about our team having a bad season. We still had chances to become bowl eligible.

  • • •

  On Tuesday morning I called Chad Moller, our media relations director, and told him I planned to step down at the end of the season. I needed to start telling the people within the program who were closest to me. It was already such a crazy week, and it was only Tuesday. “I hate to throw this on your plate, Chad,” I told him. Initially we thought about making the announcement Sunday, November 15, leading up to our final home game. We also could have done it the following Sunday. Either way, Chad needed to start working on the press release. He was one of the few people I had told about my cancer diagnosis.

  I just didn’t want my decision to become a distraction. I’d tell the team on Sunday, the news would come out, and we’d settle down in time for our next game. I planned to tell the staff first, then call in my seniors and explain my diagnosis and my reasons for retiring. I would have needed their support to help me with the rest of the team.

  On Friday afternoon I got back from lunch and my secretary, Ann, had some troubling news. Her husband had heard a report on the radio that I was going to retire because of illness. My plans had leaked. We thought it first surfaced on an online message board. I was distraught. We quickly huddled in my office. Chad was there, along with Bryan Maggard, our assistant AD. Missy arrived. So did my daughter Erin. Mack Rhoades was already on the way to Kansas City. We had to get him on the phone. Chad convinced me we couldn’t ignore the leak. We had to act fast.

  My mind was blown. This was the last thing I wanted to happen, especially after everything my team had been through that week. For someone who wants to control everything, suddenly everything was out of my control, and my players and staff would have to pay the price. We called a team meeting for 2:35 pm. We were scheduled to leave on busses to Kansas City right after the meeting.

  I sat at my desk in tears. I was just an emotional wreck. “They don’t deserve this,” I kept saying. “They don’t deserve this.”

  First, I wanted to tell my coaches, but we ran out of time for a staff meeting because we had to leave Columbia for Kansas City. I tell my staff everything, but my cancer diagnosis and my plans for the end of the season were things I had to keep from them. I wanted to tell them on my terms. Not like this. We had to gather the players for an unscheduled team meeting.

  I jotted down a few notes on a legal pad because I knew I’d have trouble getting the words out. Chad helped along with my wife and daughter. Tears poured out as I wrote words then scratched them out and started over. I needed time to think. How do I say this? The team meeting lasted no more than five minutes. I told them about my cancer. I told them how I needed to prioritize my time. You could hear some loud gasps in the room. Then there was silence. We filed out of the room and climbed on busses to Kansas City.

  I knew the staff was scared. When you worked for me, you had security in a remarkably insecure business. But I unhinged their world with this news. Some of those coaches had worked for me for more than 20 years. I felt a great sense of guilt for the uncertainties they were feeling. It was going to happen in a matter of weeks when I told them my plans, but it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not 24 hours before a game after the most turbulent week of our careers. We had the Maty Mauk issues already that year, which were unprecedented for our program at the quarterback position. Then we had the boycott. Now I was throwing cancer and retirement at them.

  I had strong suspicions about the source of the leak and traced it back to the top of the university leadership. I had reason to believe someone in a position of power didn’t approve of how I handled the boycott. Maybe they would take credit for pressuring me to step down, which is absurd. It had been 16 days since I told Mack my plans to retire after this season. And, I would have made a lot more money from my buyout had I been fired. By retiring, I left millions of dollars on the table. My athletic director made the final decision on how we would handle the boycott. He was my boss, and I agreed with him.

  I never feared the news of my diagnosis and retirement plans would leak. This was confidential information about an employee’s health. There were very few people who were privy to my health and my plans. To leak that information goes against the code and honor of being a university leader and showed a remarkable lack of character.

  I was livid. I was hurt. But we had a game to play and a season to salvage. I had a job to do.

  • • •

  We had t
o refocus in a hurry. Heading into that game our staff had heard rumors about BYU players taunting opponents with racial slurs. I didn’t know if that was true, but we heard it from other coaches who played BYU. We called the BYU head coach, Bronco Mendenhall, to make sure nothing like that would happen in our game. After everything that had just happened on our campus, we couldn’t have anything like that in this game. We weren’t accusing BYU of anything, but it’s just what we were told. Thankfully, we didn’t have any issues in the game. That would have been the last thing we needed.

  Our whole world is focus. That’s what you learn to do no matter the conditions in a game or the distractions outside the game. Our guys deserved better than this, but we still had to play the game.

  We got off the bus at Arrowhead Stadium for our Friday night walk-through. The players went to the center of the field, gathered in a circle, held hands, and prayed. It was an emotional moment that my wife and I appreciated.

  The odds were against us to beat BYU, but I had never gone into a game thinking we couldn’t win. That night we found a way.

  We fell behind but went ahead in the fourth quarter on a Drew Lock touchdown pass to J’Mon Moore. We hung on for a 20–16 victory. It was such an emotional night. I was just happy for our players and staff. While the ESPN crew tried to interview me on the field, my players surrounded me after the game and chanted my name. Hugs came from all directions. That was a surreal experience I will never forget.