Rencher: ‘We threw our last Hail Mary’
By: Gavin Oliver August 11, 2020

After the news broke Sunday night that commissioners of the Power Five conferences held an emergency meeting to discuss cancelling the 2020 football season, and that the Big Ten was ready to pull the plug on its fall sports season, Clemson running back Darien Rencher and quarterback Trevor Lawrence knew they needed to act fast if they hoped to save the fall season.

So in what Rencher described as a “Hail Mary” attempt to do just that, he and Lawrence led the charge to unite with players from all of the other power conferences to form a coalition and make their voices heard using the Twitter hashtags #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay.

Lawrence and Rencher managed to quickly arrange a Zoom call with other players, and shortly after midnight on Monday, the two players and other college athletes shared a flyer on social media which includes a list of demands:

  • 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 communications and trust between players and officials; ultimately create a College Football Players Association
  • Representative of the Players of all Power 5 Conferences

On Monday evening, Lawrence and Rencher met with the media to discuss how the coalition came together in short order and the mission behind the new movement.

“The past 48 hours have been crazy,” Rencher said. “In football terms, we threw our last Hail Mary to see if we can make something happen. And then just to see the response and support of so many guys that ultimately want the same thing – we want to play, we want to do it safely, and a reason we want to play safe is we feel safe, and just seeing all of us come together around the #WeWantToPlay and #WeAreUnited has been really special.”

Rencher gave a shoutout to some of the other players that were involved in the late-night Zoom meeting, which began around 10:30 p.m. ET, including Oregon safety Jevon Holland, Oregon defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux, Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell, Oregon wide receiver Johnny Johnson III, Alabama running back Najee Harris, Washington State defensive lineman Dallas Hobbs, Michigan defensive back Hunter Reynolds, Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields.

“All of those guys were very instrumental in all of us coming together last minute,” Rencher said. “One of the guys who is a graphic comm major pretty much put out the graphic, and it went viral.”

Rencher said his connections with other players involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and the Big Ten United group, as well as players that Lawrence knows, helped them create the coalition swiftly.

“There was a lot of people that rallied together around Black Lives Matter movements a couple months ago,” Rencher explained. “There’s a lot of student-athletes that obviously, the world saw we took a stand and used our voices. I think a lot of people from those schools supported what we were doing, we support what they were doing, so there was a couple group messages, a couple of college athlete unities, senior unions, kind of joined. Amari Rodgers on our team, we had a couple guys from other universities. So, I knew a guy from the Big Ten United, two of the guys (from Michigan and Minnesota) and then the Pac-12 guys, they had their thing out West.

“So last night, obviously a lot of people saw the Big Ten, the commissioners had a big decision to make. And ultimately I felt like if we could get one collective voice — it’s powerful, having unity as student-athletes — we could come together, all five Power Five conferences, and come together, I think it’d be special. So we kind of used our resources. Trevor got his boys, I got some of my friends, other people just kind of got everybody together and I think we got the right guys from the right places and ultimately we made the right difference.”

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