Tom Allen Sees and Supports the #WeWantToPlay Players Movement
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Image: Indiana University Athletics
Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)
The newest movement in college football is the #WeWantToPlay movement that was started by Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and has grown exponentially since rumors of a cancelled season began picking up steam this weekend. Indiana head coach Tom Allen is very active on social media and has taken notice.
While Tom Allen has “not had anyone come to me, personally, and say 'hey coach, I would like to meet and talk about that” he is well aware that his some of his players have made their voices public on playing.
“I saw it last night” Allen said, “I am pretty active on social media. I kind of live on Twitter for recruiting purposes and so you just see things. It was an upswell of guys just saying … I think you have just seen guys that have been around their teams the last couple of weeks, probably more so than they have before.”
Allen believes that social media “reveals a lot about what is going on in their heads. For me, a lot of our guys have put out that they want to play. I know they want to play and our coaches want to play. We support them on that, as always.”
The Hoosiers have wrapped up four days of fall camp and Allen sees how much IU players want to play by how they’re attacking each day. The players “have showed how much they want to play by how focused they are every day and how hard they have worked” Allen explained. “Amidst very difficult circumstances, they have done what we have asked them to do. We have been very, very specific about what you do to mitigate the risks involved when you have a situation like this with the masks and all of the different things that we are doing in practice, out of practice, in meetings and in the weight room. None of those things have changed. I think you have just seen, across the country, that a lot of guys have a strong desire. They have worked really hard to get to this point. We just want to create a great environment, a safe environment for them to be able to do what they love to do.”
The #WeWantToPlay movement has joined forces with the PAC-12’s #WeAreUnited movement to come up with a list of wants that college football players would like to see in order to have a safe college football season.
Those wants are:
We all want to play football this season
Establish universal mandated health and safety procedures and protocols to protect college-athletes against COVID-19 among all conferences throughout the NCAA
Give players the opportunity to opt out and respect their decision
Guarantee eligibility whether a player chooses to play the season or not
Use our voices to establish open communication & trust between players and officials; ultimately create a college football players association representative of the players of all Power Five conferences.
The future of college football, and probably college athletics as a whole, is changing very quickly. The cracks in the foundation of the sport have been exposed by a lack of leadership and as the Big Ten is on a collision course with a cancelled season, there are three other conferences who are trying to play. However, it looks as if the players have found their voice.
As with any fluid situation we will provide updates as information becomes available.