Rarely do we see student-athletes, football players, get involved in political matters that affect the universities where they play.
Which brings to mind Dave Zirin's observation that conventional sports history "is a bosses' history based on bluster and lies… And most sports writing is unbearable, painting every athlete like the love child of John Wayne and Sarah Palin."
For actual history that isn't rooted in the kind of tired social cliches in which College Football Central traffics, see his A People's History of Sports in the United States of America. The Guardian reviews:
As much as the head-in the-sand liberals and die-hard conservatives tried to "keep politics out of sport" (by which they meant left-wing, radical or progressive politics – they had no problem with flag-waving) the struggles of the 1960s seeped into every corner of US sports, including football.
As Zirin shows, by 1968 many of the jocks expected by the authorities to keep the freaks in line (and to set a good, unquestioningly patriotic war-supporting example) were striking, protesting and marching alongside the freaks. Playing for the St Louis Cardinals, David Meggyesy started organising his teammates and circulating a petition against the war. His on-road roommate Rick Sortun "had been a Goldwater Republican in 1964... When he came back from training camp in 1968 [he was] a member of the Young Socialist Alliance."
One of the most amazing protests took place at the University of Washington's Husky stadium in 1972 where – to protest the war – the players in the venerable and high-profile varsity-alumni game refused to take the field for the second half until a statement announcing the team's opposition to the war was read over the public address system.
"A half a stadium of captive Nixon supporters, stuck in their seats, unable to ignore their idols' antiwar beliefs" went predictably berserk with rage and frustration. But, says eyewitness Dean Paton, quoted in A People's History, they were drowned out by anti-war football fans.
That's anti-war American football fans, cheering anti-war American footballers, one of whom, Dave Kopay – who had to be restrained from launching himself at the abuse-screaming right wingers – "later made history as the first retired male athlete to come out of the closet."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/sep/18/2
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."