Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and athletic director Mack Rhoades met with the media to discuss the Mizzou football team’s recent strike, which included a Sunday show of support by the coaching staff.
Mizzou coach Gary Pinkel: Supporting player strike wasn’t about getting president fired
“There’s no playbook, no script for what all of us have been dealing with,” Missouri’s athletic director said at a Monday press conference.
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Both Pinkel and Rhoades were adamant that they were not in this to oust university system president Tim Wolfe, who resigned Monday after students, local government and others called for his exit. Rather, they say they were in it to save student Jonathan Butler’s life, as Butler was on a hunger strike, and to support their players.
After Wolfe’s exit, both Butler and Mizzou’s players announced their strikes were over.
“What [Wolfe’s] position was, that wasn’t what I was involved with,” Pinkel said. “It had nothing to do with it. It simply had to do with my players came to me and said, ‘This guy’s dying. Will you support me, Coach?’”
Rhoades: In talking to athletes, there was never talk about anyone losing their job. It was simply about saving someone's life.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 Pinkel: My players called me and told me they were going on campus ... Guys were emotional, concerned about Butler's life.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 Rhoades: On Sunday, players weren't talking about anyone resigning, it was about Butler eating.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 Pinkel equated the response in the locker room to the response in the Michael Sam situation, when even if everyone didn’t agree, they were all in it together.
“I’m sure some players said, ‘I don’t know if I agree with this,’ but we’re a family,” Pinkel said. “I’m not naive to think internally there were players who put their hands up and said, ‘I’m in,’ just because they care about their teammates.”
Rhoades says a white team captain says the whole team was united on boycott decision. There's only one white captain, center Evan Boehm.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 Rhoades and Pinkel both said that they did not feel leveraged by the athletes, and that they supported this measure, even if it meant canceling the game.
Pinkel: I don't think at the time the game was important. We wanted to play the game but it was still about this young man.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 “We run a very disciplined, structured program here,” Pinkel said. “But sometimes you have to back off a little bit.”
“It’s not anything we’re going to go out and suggest to our student-athletes,” Rhoades said. “I go back to extraordinary circumstance. And sometimes extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary measures, and I believe that’s what the student-athletes on our football team felt was necessary.”
As for the racial issues, Pinkel said that “obviously, we’ve got some problems,” and he said that it has helped his team when black players have spoken up about things that have made them uncomfortable. Players have come to him before about issues, he said.
“That’s probably happened a few, one or two or three times,” Pinkel said. “I’ve called in players myself and felt they were mistreated.”
Mack Rhoades: The last two days have been challenging. There's no playbook, no script for what all of us have been dealing with.
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 Rhoades on Wolfe resignation: Mixed emotion. "President Wolfe is a caring man." Said he realized he was at a point he needed to step down
— Dave Matter (@Dave_Matter) November 9, 2015 See More:
