Emmitt Smith is the exceptional man from Florida. The pride of Pensacola, Smith racked up the second-most rushing yards in U.S. high school history and broke a string of records at the University of Florida before leading the Dallas Cowboys to three Super Bowl titles in the 1990s and in 2004 retired as the NFL. all-time leading rusher. Now 54, Smith is charging headfirst toward the goal line, Ron DeSantis’ war on wokeness.
Last year the governor of Florida a law ratified banning the state’s public universities and four-year community colleges from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, while Texas and a handful of other states have focused on university DEI programs. In response, the University of Florida eliminated 28 DEI positions earlier this month and pledged to transfer the savings from those cuts — about $5 million — to a faculty retirement fund. The school subsequently acquired a diplomatic face; “We will continue to foster a community of trust and respect,” the official statement said. But DeSantis’ tone sounded much truer. “Florida is where DEI goes to die,” he wrote in a triumphant social media post.
The next day, Smith hit back with a post of his own: an iOS press release. “I am disgusted by UF’s decision and the precedent it sets,” he wrote. “We cannot continue to believe and trust that a team of leaders from all the same backgrounds will make the right decision when it comes to equality and diversity. History has proven that this is not the case.” Notably, Smith called on the “MANY minority athletes at UF” to join in publicly voicing their concerns, while challenging the new crop of student-athletes to join the scrap heap or risk being “complicit in supporting systemic problems”. The NAACP, which has not hesitated in the past to fight DeSantis’ woke war, went a step further and urged black athletes across the country to fully arm Florida’s public universities. But this is easier said than done.
For starters, the NAACP statement specifies that students will reconsider “any possible decision to attend and compete at a predominantly white institution in the state of Florida,” a nuance that will surely be lost in translation. On the other hand, it was much easier to stick to your principles in Smith’s day, when fame (on network TV, to professional scouts, to marketing executives) was the only thing that really mattered in college sports. But now student-athletes don’t just have that to choose from; they have more power than ever over their name, image and likeness – and more opportunities to make serious money while still in school. This new economy, the result of a landmark lawsuit that forced a rewrite of the NCAA bylaws, has left college coaches flat-footed — for too long the main beneficiaries under the old arrangement, in which top football coaches earned nearly $11 million a year.
Nick Saban retired as football coach at the University of Alabama in January, in no small part because he had to work harder to recruit new players. Earlier this week, he joined Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on a panel on Capitol Hill to discuss potential antitrust legislation that standardize and limit compensation for athletes. This comes a week after Dartmouth men’s basketball players voted to unionize and several active antitrust lawsuits challenge NCAA compensation caps and question whether athletes should have employee status. “All the things I believed in all those years, 50 years of coaching, don’t exist in college athletics anymore,” said Saban, who earned nearly $12 million at Alabama. “Whoever wants to pay the most money, raise the most money and buy the most players will have the best chance of winning. And I don’t think that’s the spirit of college athletics, and I don’t think it’s ever been the spirit of what we want college athletics to be.
According to the Associated Press, the NCAA and Power Five conferences will have spent a total of $2.97 million on lobbying efforts in 2023. (Cruz gave his deeply divided Congress a “50-50” chance of passing meaningful legislation by the end of the year regarding NILs.) But Florida is a school that can pay to keep playing the game the way it is. Their athletics department, with more than $190 million in revenue last year, is among the most funded in the country, their alumni give generously to the cause, and the school is a founding member of the SEC – the primo conference of college sports. There’s little reason to believe Florida won’t continue to compete with rival Florida State for the most prolific crop of college prospects outside of Texas. And there is little reason to believe that a talented high school student won’t apply to the school that offers the best access to zero deals, especially if the price is high enough to help themselves and their families, especially those athletes who don’t want that. to play professionally.
If there is one school in Florida feeling the pressure of Florida’s DEI ban, it is Florida A&M University (or Famu for short), the historically black university (HBCU) affected by the DEI ban. stands. With a budget of about $10 million, Famu is already struggling to compete for talent, fame, facilities and fundraising. When the NIL era began three years ago, some thought it would lead to more top recruits considering HBCUs like Famu, especially after Deion Sanders began his college football coaching career at Jackson State University in Mississippi. But that optimism came and went when Coach Prime committed to Colorado, where he has shown a special skill at exploiting the current system. With these strong headwinds, Famu will have to work even harder to remain an HBCU sports leader when it finds itself in a state whose governor appears intent on codifying anti-Black policies.
All this is to say: This may be the toughest wall Smith has hit. And he should be commended for standing up to the state that launched him. But it will take more than the greatest running back jumping into the fray in support of Florida’s woke warriors to see the error of their ways. It will take rivals from other states denigrating Florida colleges, athletic boosters withholding support and the Sunshine State’s other athletic greats supporting Smith. It seems like too much of an ask to put the onus on student-athletes to solve this. Moreover, crossing the line is not their solution.
