Whether fans like it or not, sports and social justice demonstrations are beginning to go hand in hand even at the college level.
Recently, during a University of Alabama women’s soccer game, a number of the players of the Crimson Tide took a knee while holding up signs saying “Show the Red Card To Racism”, prior to their game against Tenessee.
This sparked the question of whether the Alabama football team itself would join in and make a statement before its first game against Missouri. But head coach Nick Saban said during his gameweek press conference on Monday that the team currently has no plans to participate in any demonstrations as of right now.
“Well, we really haven’t discussed anything to this point,” said Saban. “I think that we’ve always tried to represent the University of Alabama together as a unit, so any talk of anything that we might do, it would be something that we would want to do as a team. There hasn’t been any discussion about any of those things to this point.
“We do have an SEC Togetherness shirt that all the players are going to receive and can actually wear in pre-game if they choose to.”
Alabama has participated in a number of social justice demonstrations this year during the height of the nation wide protests.
In June, Alabama put out a video saying “all lives can’t matter until Black Lives Matter,” which was written by offensive lineman Alex Leatherwood and saw participation from the likes of Saban, Mac Jones, DeVonta Smith and more.
In August, Saban led a team organized march where hundreds of student-athletes walked and with Black Lives Matter signs and shirts.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
