SBJ College: Conversations On Race

Kevin Warren is exactly who you want leading this conversation on race. His open letter announcing an anti-racism coalition was one of the most authentic and personal messages I’ve seen so far.

NEW ORLEANS AD SEEKS TO EDUCATE WITH VIDEO

• A few days after George Floyd’s death, a friend told Univ. of New Orleans AD Tim Duncan, “That could have been you.” The week before Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police, setting off a week of protests and riots across the country, Duncan found himself in a frightening case of mistaken identity in Newton, Mass., where he still owns a residence. Six officers came up on him, guns drawn, thinking he fit the description of a murder suspect because he’s a tall, black man. Duncan was released, and says he didn’t think about it much until he saw the video of Floyd’s death. “It’s not right,” he said when I reached him this afternoon.
  
  
• Over and over, Duncan blamed his initial lack of reaction on “normalizing” such situations. He’s upset at allowing himself to develop a "blindspot" because such scenes play out too regularly. Duncan tells SBJ: “You just move on after something like that and it’s not right. I shouldn’t be doing that. It was a point of self-reflection.” After consulting with athletes and staff, Duncan taped a short video describing what happened and posted it yesterday. At presstime, it had more than 22,000 views on Twitter.
  
  
• Duncan: “The reaction has been overwhelming.” His primary objective was to educate UNO’s student athletes that something like that can happen anywhere, even in an idyllic small town like Newton, a Boston suburb where Duncan lived when he worked at Northeastern. Duncan followed up with a Zoom chat with athletes, which was intended to give them a "safe place" for them to say what’s on their mind. Duncan: “The intent was to show that this can literally happen to anyone.”
  
  
• UNO’s athletes are encouraged to participate in protests, Duncan said, with two words of advice: Go in the daytime and keep it peaceful. He expects to keep the dialogue going when UNO athletes return to campus. Duncan: “I want them to be able to have some of those uncomfortable conversations about race and do it from their own perspective.”

New Orleans AD Tim Duncan says the reaction to his video for student athletes has been "overwhelming"

ELMORE TO ADs: GIVE ATHLETES A VOICE

• When Len Elmore dialed into a video chat yesterday with the Howard basketball team, he was there to do the very thing he advises black student athletes to do in times of social outrage -- talk about what you’re feeling. Not many people are as qualified as Elmore to talk about the protesting and police misconduct in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. As a college student at Maryland, he protested. As an attorney in New York, he prosecuted police misconduct. “It’s amazing how much things have not changed since the late 1980s,” he said. Now, at 68, he teaches a graduate class at Columbia about athlete activism.
  
  
• I reached Elmore this afternoon, unaware that he had just spoken to the athletes from Howard. “The first thing is you have to communicate and talk about what the issues actually are,” Elmore said. “There can be so many different versions of what the real story is, it can get confusing.” When asked how ADs and coaches should be addressing Floyd’s death and the protests that ensued, Elmore said it’s vital to provide their athletes with outlets to talk about it.
  
  
• But Elmore advised against athletes joining the protests because it’s just too easy to be swept up in a scene that could turn violent. “You just can’t,” Elmore said. “You’ve got too much riding on it. I recommend against it because of the peril you put yourself in. Even peaceful protests can turn violent.” Elmore said a better alternative is helping store owners pick up the pieces. Elmore: “What I heard from the (athletes) is that they want to be involved. They know they’re part of the community. What can they do?”

FBS CONFERENCES GET MESSAGE OUT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

• FBS conferences have been active on Twitter about recent social justice issues and resulting protests, per SBJ’s Austin Karp. The SEC, Big 12, Pac-12, AAC, Mountain West, Conference USA and MAC tweeted #BlackoutTuesday today on the platform. The movement was aligned with other organizations and activists posting blank, black boxes today in support of protests against police brutality.
  
  
• The SEC posted a visual on its feed that had the logo of all of its schools, as well as a link to tweets on the subject from SEC coaches, administrators, ADs and others. The Big 12, MWC, C-USA and MAC tweeted statements from their respective boards. The Big Ten posted a personal statement from Commissioner Kevin Warren -- which announced the formation of the Big Ten Conference Anti-Hate & Anti-Racism Coalition -- while the Pac-12 posted a joint statement signed by Commissioner Larry Scott and each conference AD.
  
  
• A letter from ACC Commissioner John Swofford is expected tomorrow. The American went with an unsigned statement from the conference. Best we could tell, the Sun Belt has been silent so far.

CHECK OUT THE PRINT ISSUE OF SBJ THIS WEEK

• Don’t miss this week’s issue of SBJ. Meanwhile, if you’d like to receive the print issue at your home office, update your delivery address at any time within your account settings here. If you have any questions about how and where to receive your print copy of SBJ, please email help@sportsbusinessdaily.com.

SPEED READS

• After Bowling Green cut its baseball program two weeks ago due to budgetary concerns, a fundraising effort could save the team. WTOL-11 reports that fundraising efforts have produced the $1.5 million necessary to keep the program for the next three years. Meanwhile, a group is attempting to reverse East Carolina’s decision to drop men’s and women’s swimming & diving. The group is “receiving guidance from Billy Rienhart,” a political consultant who worked to save five sports at UNC-Wilmington in 2013, per SwimSwam.
  
  
• Starting next year, top-ranked college golfers "will be allowed immediate and automatic exempt status on the developmental tours instead of having to play their way in, providing a better chance for those players to eventually graduate to the PGA Tour," per SBJ's John Lombardo. Players eligible for what will be called PGA Tour University "must be NCAA Division I golfers who complete a minimum of four years in college." Korn Ferry Tour exec Brendan von Doehren said on Golf Channel yesterday the sport “doesn't have a draft like many of the other sports leagues in this country and around the world and this is a really unique opportunity for us to do something similar and identify, prepare and transition that top crop of collegiate players directly into our preparatory tours."
  
  
• Navy and Notre Dame will not be meeting in Ireland to start the 2020 football season due to COVID-19 concerns, per the Annapolis Capital Gazette. The Aer Lingus College Football Classic had been “sold out for months.” Navy AD Chet Gladchuk said “almost 40,000 tourist packages had been sold.” The Labor Day weekend game is being moved to Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, and the academy is “not anticipating being allowed to have a sellout crowd.”
  
  
• Charlotte AD Mike Hill, in an SBJ Unpacks podcast, had this to say about athletes returning to campus: "They are under our care, and we’re going to take extraordinary measures to try to ensure them the safest environment that we can when they return. One of the most important parts, we felt, of developing our plans was to actually vet it with some student-athletes." Hill also feels Charlotte will be able to keep all of its teams intact for now, despite revenue concerns in athletic departments across the country. "We had a rainy-day fund, and this qualifies as a monsoon," he said. "We’re in a position now where we do not have to cut sports."

NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR SBJ GAME CHANGERS!

• Online nominations for Game Changers have opened. We’ll be accepting nominations through midnight June 21. The Game Changers event will be Oct. 27-28, and a special section will run in SBJ in the Oct. 19 issue.

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ Media with John Ourand and SBJ Esports with Adam Stern and Trent Murray. Also check out the SBJ Unpacks newsletterevery Monday-Friday night, as we look at how the sports industry is being impacted by COVID-19.

Something on the College beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).