This is an opinion column.
Shut up and play is dead.
Officially and unequivocally. Dead. Flatlined. Gone.
To heaven or hell, I’m not sure. It’s just gone.
Whether you like it or not. Lord knows a lot of you don’t. Bless your hearts.
It died late Monday afternoon when hundreds of students, students who play college sports, students who play college sports at the University of Alabama—yeah, chew on that for a bit—quietly and peacefully, yet as intently as if it were going for the win, marched.
Marched from their safe cocoon (Mal Moore athletic facility) to, well, maybe the only place on the Tuscaloosa campus where it could be unequivocally clear a stake was being driven through shut up and play’s hardened heart. To the place where George Wallace once stood as Alabama’s Governor and told two young Black people, in essence, Shut up, you’re not welcome here. Now. Tomorrow. Or forever.
FILE - In this June 11, 1963 file photo, Gov. George Wallace carries out his promise to stand in the doorway to prevent integration at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. At right, Nicholas Katzenbach, deputy attorney general of the United States, listens to Wallace. (AP Photo, File)AP
Marched with Nick Saban. With Nick Saban leading the throng—head down, striding. With Nick Saban not far from a banner reading “Black Lives Matter”.
Marched until they all reached Foster Auditorium’s schoolhouse door and with voice after voice put shut up and play out of its whining, wailing misery.
The March for Social Change in Tuscaloosa was the athletes’ idea, the athletes’ passion. It was a defiance of Shut up and play, just like the powerful “Black Lives Matter’ video the team revealed in June. That Saban was there, with every step, was last rites.
“Through this process, I’ve learned a lot from our players,” Saban said, emphasis (mine) on our. “I don’t get to see the world through the same lens that a lot of our players do. I think I respect and appreciate the lens they see the world in, and they live the world in.”
Respect. Appreciate the lens they see the world in, and they live the world in.
Pull the plug on Shut up and Play. Bye. Bye.
8/31/20 CE March for Social Justice Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban in front of the doors where George Wallace once tried to bar two Blacks students from entering. Photo by Kent Gidley 8/31/20 CE March for Social Justice Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban Photo by Kent GidleyCrimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics
Shut up and play had been on life support for a few months now as athletes—no, as men and women who entertain us with their physical gifts spoke up, tweeted, and marched against the plagues of racism, injustice, and inequality. Did so even as some screamed, Shut up and play.
Even on college campuses, where for too long athletes were barred from speaking their truth, from sharing their pain (not the pain that gets you on the injured list, the pain of seeing childhood friends incarcerated. Or dead). Barred by coaches earning millions most of them will never see. Barred by coaches fearful their players’ pain might infect their locker-room. Or worse, enrage donors and fans.
Shut up and play. Yeah, coaches whispered it too. Until a Mississippi State running back hit send on a tweet that caused that state to finally change its embarrassing flag. Until Oklahoma State RB Chuba Hubbard, a team star, demanded “CHANGE” in a tweet after head coach Mike Gundy obliviously tweeted a photo of himself wearing a T-shirt promoting a cable network that blatantly disdains his athletes’ pain. Until student-athletes at the University of Texas demanded change, including the donation of .5% of the athletic department’s earnings to Black organizations and to Black Lives Matter. Until Black athletes at the University of Southern California created the United Black Students-Athletes association and vowed to “influence and improve circumstances for the Black Community.”
That’s only the shortlist of untils in college athletics.
Untils that inextricably altered the dynamic between college coaches and athletes.
At least those coaches who want to recruit, coach, and win.
The pros shut it down last week. Ignited by a group of young men from Wisconsin, young Black men mostly, who simply said not today. Not three days after a Black man in their state was shot seven times in the back by a police officer. Last Wednesday, the Milwaukee Bucks sat in their locker room inside the National Basketball Association’s brilliant “bubble” and refused to participate in a playoff game minutes before the scheduled tip-off. A suddenly trivial playoff game.
The sit-in lit a fire. The NBA expressed nary a hint of disdain and said its postseason was on hold. WNBA kindred spirts followed suit, as did the NFL’s Detroit Lions, who refused to practice that day. As did the MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers. As did two-time tennis Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka, who is Black and Japanese, who refused to play in the Thursday Western & Southern semifinal; the WTA, in solidarity, delayed all matches until Friday. (On Monday evening, Osaka wore a mask bearing the name Breonna Taylor for her first round match at the U.S. Open.)
Naomi Osaka, of Japan, wears a mask in honor of Breonna Taylor before her match against Misaki Doi, of Japan, during the first round of the US Open tennis championships, Monday, Aug. 31, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)AP
In the midst of it all, LeBron James, arguably the most influential Black athlete on the planet right now, let it fly after the Wisconsin shooting: …we are scared as Black people in America,” he said. “Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified. Because you don’t know, you have no idea. You have no idea how that cop that day left the house. You don’t know if he woke up on the good side of the bed, you don’t know if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
Shut up and play was on its death bed.
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James before Game 4 of an NBA basketball first-round playoff series against the Portland Trail Blazers, Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (Kim Klement/Pool Photo via AP)AP
It’s been under siege for decades, really. Since athletes—no, since men like Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Curt Flood, and a youngster named Lew Alcindor risked popularity and paychecks to shed light on the racial injustices of their time.
A couple of years ago, shut up and play was actually given a new life. When a rangy quarterback from the San Francisco 49ers took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to call attention to the nation’s plagues of social injustice and police brutality.
Some of us heard him. Not shut up and play-- though that was the beginning of its last hoo-rah. Boosted by President Trump bombastic rhetoric, it hung on. For a while.
On Monday, it took its last breath.
“Sports has always created a platform for social change,” Saban said. “For each of us involved in sports, I think we have a responsibility and obligation to do that in a responsible way and use our platform in a positive way to try to create social change in positive ways.”
In lieu of flowers: Just, shut up.
A voice for what’s right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama (and beyond), Roy’s column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, and occasionally in the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj
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