With college football in flux, some Mizzou players say they want to play despite COVID
While the fate of the college football season seems to change by the hour, some Missouri Tigers players are joining the #WeWantToPlay hashtag campaign on Twitter.
Late Sunday night, some college football stars, including Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State’s Justin Fields, took to social media expressing their desire to play their fall seasons in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some who took part in the evolving conversation even suggested creation of a players’ union.
Mizzou’s players haven’t tweeted about unions, but some certainly want to play a college football season this fall. All-America linebacker Nick Bolton tweeted, “We just wanna ball man.”
Tight end Daniel Parker Jr. said football “brings us together.”
“Been through some good times & some bad times, all I can say is football brings us together, doesn’t matter the race, height or size,” Parker wrote. “At the end of the day it’s one family vs another on that field... #WeWantToPlay.”
MU running back Tyler Badie expressed similar sentiment, with a twist: He tweeted “give us Clemson, Ohio State, and Michigan TOO … #WeWantToPlay.”
Mizzou just added Alabama and reigning national champ LSU to its 2020 schedule last week, but Badie wasn’t shying away from lining up against other teams considered to be among college football’s elite.
While the SEC announced last week how Mizzou’s 2020 schedule was going to look, inspiring hope among those who want to see games contested this fall, that likelihood took a nosedive over the weekend.
The Mid-American Conference announced Saturday that it was postponing its fall season with hopes of playing in the spring. There’s nothing official yet from the Big Ten, but the Detroit Free Press reported that conference also plans to shut down for fall and play in the spring.
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 1:48 PM.