RUSH: Now, I want to share with you a story from the Daily Wire: “Two Years After Embracing Racial Protests, Mizzou Football Is A Dumpster Fire.” Some people think that it’s “hands up, don’t shoot.” Some people think it’s police brutality, the cops are targeting innocent blacks purposely. Whether they believe “hands up, don’t shoot” or not, I guarantee you that the idea that the cops are targeting innocent blacks and shooting them as target practice, that’s what’s believed.
It isn’t questioned. If one of the protesters thinks that’s what’s happening, then we must deal with that. Whether it’s right or wrong, even if it’s wrong, we are nevertheless to accept that they believe it because it has been true in the past. So no improvement that is ever made in America is allowed to count. No change for the better is allowed to count. It’s as though no progress has been made when what we see on television every Sunday is clear evidence that it has.
At any rate, James Barrett here at The Daily Wire. The subhead of the story: “The team that helped ignite the football protest movement a lesson in what happens when politics eclipse sports.” It’s a brief little history. “When the Mizzou football team chose to embrace the racial protests gripping the campus in November 2015, The New York Times cheered the players for ‘lending heft’ to the activists’ cause. Two years later, the Times had to admit that all the hysteria and the administration’s decision to cave to it turned out to be exactly what many predicted it would be: an absolute ‘disaster’ for the university.”
How many of you remember this? There were racial protests all over the campus. There were people telling stories. “A cop shot me! A cop took a shot at me,” or whatever, and we had that professor who was bullying people around, and we had the wealthy son of a very successful St. Louis guy passing himself off as a poor, beleaguered, downtrodden victim who was leading all these protests to high hell. And, of course, the pressure was brought to bear.
The football team was told it must support these protests. There must have been unity on campus for the protests — and the coach and the team went along with it. “Freshmen enrollment dropped a stunning 35%, forcing the school to shut down seven dorms and lay off over 400 employees. As for the football team, which saw millions in donations disappear overnight, well, it’s a full-fledged dumpster fire.” There are so many dormitories empty at the University of Missouri, do you know what is happening now?
People who want to go to Mizzou football games at Columbia are calling the university and asking to use those dorms as hotel rooms. And the University said: Fine. If you want to pay us to stay in the dorms overnight, pregame, fine with us. “Following a brutal 2016 season, the Mizzou Tigers started this season getting torched by three of their four opponents. In 2016, the year after letting the racial protests eclipse football, Mizzou had an abysmal season. They didn’t even come close to getting a bowl berth.
“As the once cheering Times was forced to acknowledge in July, the university that really got the campus racial protest movement going is now a lesson in what happens when an administration allows social justice activists to lay siege to an institution. In the fall of 2015, a grassy quadrangle the center of the University of Missouri became known nationwide as the command center of an escalating protest. It was a moment of triumph for protesting students. It has been a disaster for the university. Black students were already a small minority at Mizzou. They were 10% of the freshman class in 2012. They’re now just 6% last fall.”
So Mizzou is an early indicator of what happens when an organization — in this case, the University of Missouri (in the case of NFL, professional football) — gives itself over to the protest movement and allows it to rule the roost and define what happens. The University of Missouri is a ghost town now. It really is. The football team is decimated — and the NFL is embracing the national anthem protest movement almost to a T the way the University of Missouri football team embraced the protest movement on campus.
I think they even… I don’t know if they canceled a game. It was something critical that they did to show their solidarity. But the number of parents who want to send their kids there is way down. Empty dormitories. It’s a real-life lesson right in front of everybody.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you, folks, what happened at the University of Missouri. I remember this now. More than 30 black football players in the Mizzou football team promised to boycott all football-related activities until the university president was removed from office. His name was [Tim] Wolfe, and his crime was that his car ran into some protester, which turned out to be a lie. “His car ran into a protester and he kept going! He didn’t care,” and it was all a lie.
And when the players threatened to boycott the next game and all football-related activities, the administration caved and the coach caved and they got rid of the university president. And now the football team has kind of fallen on hard times. The university enrollment has fallen on hard times. The complaint was that the university president — his name is Wolfe — “responded too slow to the various charges of racism on campus,” most of which were made up! But here’s what’s happening, folks, if you just want to boil this down to its essence.
Well, Wolfe resigned because it would have cost the university a million dollars if they had to forfeit a game. If the players had not shown up, if the players had boycotted — they were threatening to — it would have cost them a million dollars. So the university president resigned. I mean, they totally caved. This is… Folks, it’s right there where all of this is could potentially be headed.