The Minnesota football boycott ended when players read the investigation report

Minnesota players ended their football boycott on Saturday and will play in the Holiday Bowl against Washington State. Head coach Tracy Claeys spoke on Sunday, saying his players believed their suspended teammates were denied due process, which he said was “pretty easy” to support them on.

Players boycotted after 10 teammates were suspended in connection to a school investigation into an alleged sexual assault. They demanded and got a meeting with school president Eric Kaler. But it turns out players apparently decided to boycott without being aware of the woman’s description of the incident:

The Gophers’ resolve to boycott the Holiday Bowl crumbled in the early hours of Saturday morning as University of Minnesota football players for the first time absorbed the painful details of a lengthy report on the sexual assault investigation that led to 10 player suspensions.

The team had left a meeting with University President Eric Kaler about 9 p.m. Friday set on carrying through on their protest of the player discipline.

Yet by 1:30 a.m., the Gophers seniors were ready to end their boycott. That’s when a group text went out: “Players-only meeting 6 a.m.” Many of them didn’t sleep.

At 9 a.m., bleary-eyed and exhausted, the Gophers’ senior leaders announced the walkout was over, even though they received no concessions from Kaler.

The graphic details are in an 80-page report released by the school after its investigation, which generally found the woman to be more credible than the players.

This was what Claeys tweeted after the players announced their boycott and before the report was made public:

And this is what he’s saying now about a pre-boycott meeting with players:

He said he told them “about all the different fallouts. One was that we might not be able to play in the bowl game. Two is that we knew that there was going to be a group who took the stance that we were being pro-sexual assault, which we’re not. And then I told them there’s a great chance I could lose my job over this.”

Claeys also said that he would donate $50,000 to the victims of sexual assault.

The report was evidently not available to players before they began their boycott. Taking such a dramatic public stand against the university without knowing the university’s story was misguided, at best.

If Claeys had obtained the report pre-boycott, he had to have known the boycott would collapse once the report became public. Its contents and related evidence did not lead to any criminal charges, but these are clearly not allegations that anyone would ever want to be described as defending. And if Claeys hadn’t read it before tweeting qualifier-free support of the boycott, he should’ve tried to do so.

Losing his job after this -- standing in vague defiance of a school action and not saying anything publicly about due process until afterward -- would not be shocking. Coaches usually have to support their players, but far more important is avoiding the appearance of blindly supporting people who are accused of violence against women.

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