It is time to end voter suppression. All voting aged Americans must have access to the voting booth and all votes must be counted fairly.
I am proposing a very simple program that strongly encourages top-recruited minority athletes to boycott universities with high-profile sports programs in any state that has passed voter suppression laws. We will call this social program for justice, The Boycott. The University of Alabama has won six NCAA football championships since 2009. Their success obviously generates a lot of income for the school and the state, and has contributed to a collective civic pride throughout the state. However, since the Supreme Court overturned Shelby v. Holder in 2013, voter rolls have been purged and many polling placed closed in Alabama. How well would the university team do if a very large number of the 80%-minority football athletes chose to pursue their education at a different university? This year Alabama, Georgia, Texas, LSU and Oklahoma are all in the top 20 in the NCAA football polls. Imagine the pressure losing those players would put on state legislatures, as these teams sink to irrelevance in the NCAA Football rankings.
How do we get top athletes to participate in The Boycott? First, there needs to be an organization, named perhaps led by a well-known and respected and perhaps even somewhat controversial national sports figure who could draw immediate media attention to The Boycott. Imagine someone like Stephen A. Smith who has a wide audience on ESPN and has a knack for drawing attention to social causes. The program would also need several well-known and highly-respected sports figures to go on sports talk shows to bring further national attention to the movement. They would need to speak to highly-recruited high school seniors to help persuade them to attend schools in states that do not suppress the vote. I am thinking of stars like Steph Curry and LeBron James for the basketball recruits, and Deion Sanders, Lamar Jackson, and Jalen Hurts for the football recruits. These top professional athletes will also be essential in raising funds and possible scholarship money to help support these athletes and families as they may be attending colleges a little farther from home than their state university.
A recent rule change for NCAA athletes gives The Boycott an immediate shot in the arm. NCAA athletes at Division I schools no longer need to sit out a year when transferring schools. Therefore, all college athletes can now be approached, not just incoming freshmen. The threat of losing a sophomore All-American quarterback or a junior star running back or dynamic freshman wide receiver next season would put much more pressure on the school and thus the state legislatures than losing incoming freshmen alone. No roster will be secure with the possibility of players transferring next season.
I recently read that young women are staying away from universities in states that do not allow abortions. The Boycott is a similar moral and ethical social movement, but The Boycott creates enormous economic and social pressures on these universities and states to change these voter suppression laws quickly. Imagine if the number one college QB in the country, on the top ranked football team in the nation, suddenly announces he will be transferring to a new school because the state that he represents does not give him fair access to the voting booth. It would be devastating to a state to watch its team drop from number one in the NCAA football polls to 50th the next year. The only way to affect change, maybe, is to hit ‘em where it hurts. I say let The Boycott begin.
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