BleedGopher
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Gopher & Badger players had a silent protest together before Axe game in Camp Randall
per Freedman:
Seventy rows above the gridiron of Camp Randall Stadium on the last Saturday of the Big Ten regular season, I watched Wisconsin take the field against Minnesota with two sets of eyes. One anxiously awaited the game, an intense rivalry that pitted the Badgers of my alma mater against the Gophers of my academic home this semester as a visiting professor. The other part of my vision, though, was looking for an act of principled protest that several student-athletes had alerted me to expect.
The game proved as fierce as anticipated. An underdog who hadn’t beaten its next-door foe in a dozen years, Minnesota gashed Wisconsin’s vaunted defense on the way to a 17-7 halftime lead. One brutal hit along the sideline knocked out the Badgers’ starting quarterback for the rest of the game. Wisconsin punched back in the second half, pancaking Minnesota’s quarterback on sacks and harrying him into four interceptions. When it was over in the November darkness, UW had won 31-17, and its players gleefully carried the Paul Bunyan ax, symbol of the annual showdown.
As for the political side of things, nothing had happened during the pregame warm-ups. While the national anthem was sung, both teams were kept off the field, according to a Big Ten policy that conveniently undermines any Colin Kaepernick-style dissidence. With the final whistle, Minnesota’s players vacated the field in defeat and Wisconsin’s band took over for its traditional “5th Quarter” show. In other words: bread and circuses as usual.
Only three days after the game did I learn that the protest had, in fact, occurred. But it went off in front of 77,000 empty seats, something like an hour and a half before kickoff. Several dozen of the African-American student-athletes on each team had gathered then at midfield to offer clenched-fist salutes – an homage not only to recent athletic activists such as Kaepernick and LeBron James, but very specifically to the Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who famously made the same gesture on the medal stand in Mexico City nearly a half-century ago.
As heartened as I was to belatedly learn that the players had made their statement, I felt even more acutely a sense of missed opportunity. What they had done in a silent, unpopulated stadium was precisely what the fans who would later fill all those seats – the overwhelming majority of them, not coincidentally, white fans – most needed to see and to respect and, yes, to honor.
http://theundefeated.com/features/needed-the-woke-white-fan/
Go Gophers!!
per Freedman:
Seventy rows above the gridiron of Camp Randall Stadium on the last Saturday of the Big Ten regular season, I watched Wisconsin take the field against Minnesota with two sets of eyes. One anxiously awaited the game, an intense rivalry that pitted the Badgers of my alma mater against the Gophers of my academic home this semester as a visiting professor. The other part of my vision, though, was looking for an act of principled protest that several student-athletes had alerted me to expect.
The game proved as fierce as anticipated. An underdog who hadn’t beaten its next-door foe in a dozen years, Minnesota gashed Wisconsin’s vaunted defense on the way to a 17-7 halftime lead. One brutal hit along the sideline knocked out the Badgers’ starting quarterback for the rest of the game. Wisconsin punched back in the second half, pancaking Minnesota’s quarterback on sacks and harrying him into four interceptions. When it was over in the November darkness, UW had won 31-17, and its players gleefully carried the Paul Bunyan ax, symbol of the annual showdown.
As for the political side of things, nothing had happened during the pregame warm-ups. While the national anthem was sung, both teams were kept off the field, according to a Big Ten policy that conveniently undermines any Colin Kaepernick-style dissidence. With the final whistle, Minnesota’s players vacated the field in defeat and Wisconsin’s band took over for its traditional “5th Quarter” show. In other words: bread and circuses as usual.
Only three days after the game did I learn that the protest had, in fact, occurred. But it went off in front of 77,000 empty seats, something like an hour and a half before kickoff. Several dozen of the African-American student-athletes on each team had gathered then at midfield to offer clenched-fist salutes – an homage not only to recent athletic activists such as Kaepernick and LeBron James, but very specifically to the Olympic sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who famously made the same gesture on the medal stand in Mexico City nearly a half-century ago.
As heartened as I was to belatedly learn that the players had made their statement, I felt even more acutely a sense of missed opportunity. What they had done in a silent, unpopulated stadium was precisely what the fans who would later fill all those seats – the overwhelming majority of them, not coincidentally, white fans – most needed to see and to respect and, yes, to honor.
http://theundefeated.com/features/needed-the-woke-white-fan/
Go Gophers!!
