{"id":16989,"date":"2015-12-29T09:02:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/oklahomas-playoff-journey-began-with-stand-against-racism\/"},"modified":"2015-12-29T09:02:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T17:02:40","slug":"oklahomas-playoff-journey-began-with-stand-against-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/oklahomas-playoff-journey-began-with-stand-against-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma’s playoff journey began with stand against racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014<\/strong> On a balmy morning in south Florida, Baker Mayfield and his Oklahoma teammates goofed around beneath the swaying palms as they posed for a picture in front of the Orange Bowl logo, their tight bond forged by the ups and downs of a long season \u2014 the grueling practices, the lonely hours in the weight room, the incessant scrutiny that comes with playing in a high-profile program.<\/p>\n

For the Sooners, though, it goes deeper than that.<\/p>\n

When a racist video shot by members of an Oklahoma fraternity went viral last March, exposing an ugly side to campus life and the isolation that many African-American athletes feel, the football team took a stand.<\/p>\n

In many ways, that\u2019s where the Sooners (11-1) began their journey to the College Football Playoff, setting up a semifinal game against top-ranked Clemson (13-0) in the Orange Bowl on New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge thing that we had to deal with,\u201d receiver Sterling Shepard said Monday. \u201cIt could have split the team in either of two directions. The team could\u2019ve went downhill, because you had a group of guys that believed something and another group of guys that believed something. But we were able to come together as a team and kind of work that thing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nine-second video showed members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon\u2019s Oklahoma chapter singing a song that used a racist slur for black people and referenced lynching.<\/p>\n

The Sooners halted spring practice in protest, providing a glimpse of the power college athletes can have when they dressed in all black and walked arm-in-arm at Owen Field. It was a precursor to Missouri\u2019s black players taking an even stronger stand, threatening to boycott a game over the lack of response to a series of racial grievances, leading to the resignation of the university president last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took a stand on it, just kind of the same approach that we took to it,\u201d said Shepard, who is black. \u201cIt worked out for them, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it would be simplistic to imply that everyone on Oklahoma\u2019s football team felt the same degree of outrage when the offensive video came to light. Some were deeply offended, others would have preferred to stay out of the whole mess. That\u2019s where the team\u2019s leadership \u2014 players both black and white, supported by coach Bob Stoops \u2014 came together to ensure that an issue dividing the campus didn\u2019t lead to a devastating split of team unity.<\/p>\n

The Sooners, instead, grew stronger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized our power and our stage,\u201d said Mayfield, the team\u2019s star quarterback who is white. \u201cWe can influence people. We can have an effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around the country, college athletes have taken note of this emerging social activism, a movement that has led to growing calls for players to be paid and a thwarted bid to unionize at Northwestern.<\/p>\n

Clemson defensive tackle D.J. Reader praised the Sooners for taking a stand against racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cVideos like that should never happen,\u201d Reader said. \u201cIt\u2019s sad to see that 60-something years later (since the civil rights movement), things like that are still happening in our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Sooners protest garnered plenty of attention, it didn\u2019t change a reality at most major universities: Blacks often make up a hefty percentage of the football and men\u2019s basketball teams, yet those numbers are rarely reflected in the student body at large.<\/p>\n

At Oklahoma, blacks comprise a scant 5.3 percent of enrollment on a campus with more than 27,000 students. The African-American numbers are slightly higher at Clemson \u2014 6.25 percent for the most recent semester, but still less than 1,500 in a student body of more than 22,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at Clemson we\u2019ve got a great family atmosphere,\u201d said Reader, who is black, \u201cbut I might be oblivious to some things that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemson has been through its own racial turmoil, though it hasn\u2019t really extended to the football team. In recent years, there have been calls to change the moniker on the university\u2019s signature building, Tillman Hall, which is named after former South Carolina governor and U.S. senator Benjamin Tillman, a staunch white supremacist who led the effort to disenfranchise black voters in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see some divisions,\u201d Reader said. \u201cIt\u2019s not as hard being an athlete because you\u2019re isolated a lot. You can\u2019t really do things. We don\u2019t have time to do a lot of things. I think if you want to do stuff (as a minority), it\u2019s pretty tough on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, as Oklahoma and other schools have shown, athletics can be a powerful conduit to address social ills.<\/p>\n

For the Sooners, it came with an added bonus.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it played a big part with just everybody coming together as a team,\u201d said offensive lineman Nila Kasitati, who is from American Samoa. \u201cThere are different events, things that happened throughout the season, throughout the year, that brought us together as a team, brought us to where we are right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. \u2014 On a balmy morning in south Florida, Baker Mayfield and his Oklahoma teammates goofed around beneath the swaying palms as they posed for a picture in front of the Orange Bowl logo, their tight bond forged by the ups and downs of a long season \u2014 the grueling practices, the lonely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":16990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16989"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}