Lawrence makes his No. 1 priority clear
By: Gavin Oliver August 10, 2020

On Sunday night, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, along with teammate and good friend Darien Rencher, got together with other players from every Power Five conference via Zoom and formed a coalition with the hopes of saving the 2020 college football season.

Rencher, a running back for the Tigers, tweeted the alliance shortly after midnight on Monday. The coalition has representatives from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12. The Pac-12 movement and the Big Ten United are also working in collaboration with the movement under the hashtags #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay.

During a Zoom call with reporters Monday evening, Lawrence explained how the coalition came together and why they decided to act fast in creating the movement to play this season.

“It was actually pretty seamless,” Lawrence said. “Me and Darien had been talking for – throughout this whole thing we’ve been talking, but it really got more urgent yesterday obviously with all the news and hearing about the Big Ten (possibly cancelling the fall season). We were like, man, we’ve got to do something quick and we’ve got to do something that will make people read it and make people listen. Because we felt like all the momentum was going the wrong way for us, so we wanted to do something that would change that, and it was really pretty seamless.”

According to the flyer shared on social media by Lawrence, Rencher and other athletes across the country, the new movement’s mission is to:

1. We all want to play football this season
2. Establish universal mandated health and safety procedures and protocols to protect college-athletes against COVID-19 among all conferences throughout the NCAA
3. Give players the opportunity to opt out and respect their decision
4. Guarantee eligibility whether a player chooses to play the season or not
5. Use our voices to establish open communications and trust between players and officials; ultimately create a College Football Players Association
6. Representative of the Players of all Power 5 Conferences

The bottom line, though, and the driving force behind the coalition according to Lawrence is that they just want a chance to play the game they are all passionate about.

“We just started talking to everyone and we all just agreed, hey, number one priority is we want to play,” he said. “If you don’t want to play, we respect that. There is that choice to opt out, so we understand that. But the guys that we talked to, everybody wants to play, and that was the main thing. That’s what we’re pushing for right now. There’s a lot of other stuff out there that who knows down the line, we’ll have to make decisions and maybe those things can happen. But right now, we want to play. That’s what we’re here to do, that’s what we love to do, and it was really pretty seamless.”

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