Pac-12 to speak with #WeAreUnited group Thursday night

After hearing threats of boycotting the upcoming college football season, Pac-12 brass have agreed to a virtual meeting with the leaders of the #WeAreUnited movement in hopes of moving forward

The #WeAreUnited movement is just getting started.

After making known its list of demands on Sunday regarding the upcoming collegiate athletic season, leaders of the Pac-12's #WeAreUnited movement have officially gotten the attention of the Pac-12 conference's brass.

According to an email sent Wednesday night to the #WeAreUnited group, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott proposed a Zoom call for 8 p.m. PT Thursday to discuss the athletes’ list of demands and how best to move forward.

A copy of the email was obtained by Sports Illustrated. The proposed call would include Scott, Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, Utah athletic director Mark Harlan and Pac-12 assistant commissioner Chris Merino, the league’s liaison to student-athlete groups.

The leaders/media contacts listed for the #WeAreUnited group are: Nick Ford, Utah; Dallas Hobbs, Washington State; Cody Shear, Arizona State; Jaydon Grant, Oregon State; Valentino Daltoso, Cal; Elijah Higgins, Stanford; Jevon Holland, Oregon; Joe Tryon, Washington; Malik Hausman, Arizona; Otito Ogbonnia, UCLA; Chase Williams, USC — Colorado is the only team not represented.

“We’re not your entertainment, we’re human beings,” Holland told SI. “Just like you would help your family, we want to help our mother, father, grandmother, everyone. We don’t know the long-term risks. We have no idea how it’s going to affect our body regardless if we show symptoms or not. I refuse to put my health at risk for somebody else’s benefit.”

Both sides have exchanged emails over the past couple days, beginning early talks at what's the best way to move forward after the players made their demands on Sunday. The demands by the group are reasonable for the most part, but some do seem pretty outrageous and very unlikely to get done. Those demands are as reasonable as asking the league to form a permanent civic engagement task force for social injustice issues and as aggressive as asking Scott to take a pay cut and demanding the league distribute 50% of each sport's conference revenue among athletes.

A lot of the original demands were centered around the COVID-19 virus and what the conference is doing/will do to protect its student-athletes — but most of those demands were met on Wednesday when the NCAA announced a series of health-and-safety requirements for schools and conferences to implement during the 2020 season.

In his email to the players, Scott pointed out that the NCAA's announcement should meet quite a few of their demands.

“I wanted to share with you in advance of our call some background materials—including an announcement made by the NCAA Board of Governors earlier today—that I believe are directly responsive to some of the topics and concerns that you have raised, and that will help inform our initial conversation,” Scott wrote in the email.

The NCAA is requiring all schools to cover athlete expenses related to COVID-19 and to honor all scholarships for players who opt out of the season. The association is also banning all liability waivers that schools were requiring athletes to sign. While the NCAA made that decision yesterday, Scott wrote in the email the Pac-12 was already out in front and had met all of those requests.

According to a Sports Illustrated article...

If it does happen, the call between Pac-12 leaders and #WeAreUnited would be somewhat of a landmark event in college football history. Conference and school athletic administrators would be entering into potential negotiations with a group that is at least acting as a players' union, something forbidden in the NCAA. However, the size and scope of the group is still unclear.

Pac-12 players from multiple programs have already publicly expressed their support for the #WeAreUnited movement, but have also elected to play this upcoming season regardless of whether their demands are met.

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— Jake Bentley (@Jake_Bentley_) August 2, 2020

The goals/demands consist of; 1.) Health and safety protections, 2.) Protection of all sports, 3.) End racial injustice in college sports and society, and 4.) Economic freedom and equality. The players want all of these demands for anybody wearing a college uniform, meaning for both scholarship and walk-on athletes.

“We’re trying to empower the lives of our teammates, change their lives and change the trajectory of their families’ lives,” Elisha Guidry, a defensive back at UCLA, told SI. “Especially Black lives. That’s who mostly make up these sports, and are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.”

“If you look at history throughout this country, there hasn’t been change without ruffling feathers,” Guidry adds. “Not everybody is going to want change because otherwise it would have happened already. People are going to have strong opinions. You wish you could talk to everybody and have a civil conversation and broaden their perspective. You have to do what you know is the right thing.”

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