Don’t underestimate young athletes — the NAACP boycott plan could actually work

In response to the recent assault on Black voting rights in the Deep South, the NAACP has called for athletes, fans and alums to boycott public flagship universities in eight states. After a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act, lawmakers in many of these states rushed to carve up majority-Black districts that had previously been protected, leading to the NAACP’s bold request.

It’s the equivalent of sending an all-out blitz against Peyton Manning in his prime — highly aspirational, with the strong likelihood that it won’t end well.

The NAACP is on the right track, but it’s doing too much. Targeting one flagship school in one state whose lawmakers have diluted Black representation — and crafting a compelling narrative about the injustice — would be a far more manageable quest. And convincing some accomplished performers to transfer, and some high-profile recruits to decommit, could spark seismic change.

“I believe that sending a message is where this needs to start,” said Dr. Harry Edwards, a legendary Civil Rights activist and educator.

I agree. Ideally for the boycotters, the resulting panic would compel a university and its supporters to pressure state lawmakers to create a more equitable voting map and implement other measures designed to prevent racial imbalance. And in the states in question, those pressure points would be pretty raw.

“I’d pick Tennessee,” said author Lawrence Ross, who has given lectures on campus racism (based on his book, “Blackballed”) at colleges across the country. Tennessee’s state legislature earlier this month eliminated its lone majority-Black House district, and subsequently stripped committee assignments from some Democratic lawmakers.

The University of Tennessee, Ross reasons, is the “only Power Four school in the state (besides Vanderbilt). They are desperate for the (College Football Playoff). They need Black players from out of state. And they have an irrational fan base.

“And if someone made it so they were more (like) Arkansas than Alabama, they’d give more districts to Black folks.”

It’s natural to be skeptical of such a proclamation, or to question whether the burden being placed on young athletes is unduly severe. There are so many reasons why critics rail against this idea, though many of those critics happen to have an attachment to the schools that could be negatively impacted.

Yet if scaled strategically and messaged effectively, this could absolutely work. Athletes leveraging their power for social justice is a time-tested concept, and the world of big-time college sports is already geared toward persuading teenagers and their parents that certain environments aren’t right for them.

Negative recruiting is an established reality. LSU football coach Lane Kiffin, in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, provided a template that could apply here, claiming that in his former job (at Ole Miss), he had trouble convincing Black athletes to come to Oxford, Miss., because of the school’s connection to racism and slavery.

If you don’t think the recent rush by lawmakers in many of these states to redistrict will be cited by coaches who recruit against the flagship schools in those states (including LSU) as evidence that Black students are unwelcome — well, bless your innocent heart.

There’s also an economic issue, given that many of the schools in question (mostly in the SEC, along with Clemson and Florida State from the ACC) tend to pay top dollar in the NIL era. The NAACP’s call for Black athletes to consider playing at HBCUs as an alternative feels unrealistic; those schools’ athletic programs, at this point, don’t offer comparable economic, competitive or developmental opportunities.

Not every elite recruit is the same, but almost all of them want certain things: playing time, high-level coaching and a path to make it to the pros. And, obviously, The Bag.

Some of those who are down with the NAACP’s cause, such as former NFL All-Pro running back Maurice Jones-Drew, can’t assess it without seeing green.

“I think it’s a great plan,” said Jones-Drew, whose son recently committed to UCLA for football. “If it was Maurice at 41, I would (honor) it. But most people, they’re going to take the most money they can get. And how can you tell a kid that he can’t change his family’s economic trajectory and lifestyle with a signed check?”

Yet Jones-Drew concedes that his son, Duece — a high school junior who, like his father, is an undersized running back — considered political and societal factors before announcing his intention to play for his father’s alma mater. And I reject the widespread notion that young people can’t or won’t be bothered to lead the charge for change.

That’s what happened during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, with Edwards one of many prominent examples. Edwards, now 83 and in his fifth decade as a San Francisco 49ers staff consultant, was the brainchild behind the black-gloved-fist protest at the 1968 Summer Olympics by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. In February of that year, Edwards, then 25, organized a boycott of the New York Athletic Club Indoor Track and Field Classic, protesting the club’s discriminatory membership practices, which flexed the emerging power of Black athletes during a turbulent time.

He was hardly alone. John Lewis was 25 when he led the iconic protest across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Ala. Many of the Freedom Riders were in their teens and early 20s. Claudette Colvin was 15 when she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous arrest.

“There were 9-year-olds put in jail,” Ross said. “It’s why I keep telling people to stop underestimating young folks. The other thing is this: Grown Black men, particularly those in sports, get castigated for not having a point of view. If you don’t want grown, professional sports-playing Black men to be only about their narcissistic selves, then you can’t create a special class (of athletes) when they’re young.”

Similarly, I don’t buy the argument that the most coveted athletes — the ones whose defection from a targeted school would provoke the most drama and attention — would be leaving massive amounts of cash on the table by playing elsewhere.

The NIL era has already altered the competitive landscape. Not only are schools like Ohio State and Oregon shelling out huge money for players, but traditionally lower-achieving football programs such as Indiana and Texas Tech have suddenly become big spenders. The Hoosiers’ football budget increased from less than $24 million in 2021 to $61 million in 2025, when Indiana went undefeated and won the school’s first national championship.

Presumably, other schools will try to follow Indiana’s model, given the obvious economic and branding payoffs. For example, in the wake of a breakout 2024 season, the Hoosiers struck a $50 million stadium naming rights deal.

With players enjoying more options than ever before, via the transfer portal and schools openly bidding for their services, some of the football programs being targeted by the NAACP boycott already seem more vulnerable to a shift in the balance of power than they did a few years ago.

“Those teams are on the downward trajectory anyways,” Jones-Drew says. “The Big Ten is the best conference.”

Given this backdrop, in a situation in which a Black athlete’s options are financially comparable — or at least in the same ballpark — could taking a stand against institutional racism be the deciding factor?

For starters, the NAACP and others need to sharpen the plan of attack and make a compelling case. Nearly 60 years ago, Edwards told us, “Activism divorced from thorough strategic analyses and planning is conducive to nothing so much as contradiction, chaos, and ultimately failure.” In this case, he’s aligned with the NAACP’s mission but is comfortable “pulling their coattails on the complexities of their proposed effort,” the lack of affiliation with a broader societal movement and the fact that athletes haven’t been heard from yet.

Oh, and one other thing: “Women, too, must be included. Not to include an equal appeal to Black women athletes is effectively to devalue and denigrate their sports and they themselves as athletes.”

My suggestion? If targeting a specific school, or a handful of schools, prioritize athletes in the revenue sports (football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball) to make a larger point.

Edwards has spotlighted the importance women played in the Civil Rights Movement and as progressive forces in the sports world, with examples dating back to track star Rose Robinson, who protested racial segregation during the 1959 Pan American Games, and sprinting champion Wilma Rudolph, who refused to participate in racially segregated parades and dinners celebrating her three gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

In 2020, as Edwards notes, members of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream mobilized to protest one of their owners’ derisive comments about the Black Lives Matter movement, an effort that ultimately helped swing two U.S. Senate elections in Georgia.

During that significant stretch, the ability of athletes to effect change was obvious and awe-inspiring. Can that happen again now, as some states rush to a redistricting that evokes the ignominious Jim Crow era?

“It’s on my generation to educate our children about what’s going on, because history repeats itself,” Jones-Drew said. “You have to give them as much information as possible. Because in school, they’re not talking about it. I’m a history major, so I get it. History repeats itself; I studied it, and I lived it.

“My son is abreast of things. He’s into politics. He understands that part. But he also knows who he is. He wants to play in a place where he can grow the most that he can grow — as a player and as a man. We’re Californians, but he lived in Jacksonville (when Jones-Drew starred for the Jaguars), so he’s seen the other side before. In the end, he felt most comfortable in L.A. That, to me, is what matters most.”

Protest, of course, is often uncomfortable. Jones-Drew understands the price paid by athlete-activists like Smith and Carlos, who were suspended from the U.S. Olympic Team, banned from the Olympic Village and sent home early — and subjected to widespread enmity and scorn. If their modern-day counterparts decide to stand up now, or in the future, it won’t simply be because of a blanket NAACP decree.

“I agree that if you want to change things you have to make certain (sacrifices), but it’s hard for me to ask people to take less for the greater good,” Jones-Drew says. “For this to work, a team will have to lose like 10 guys in a recruiting class — and the kids will have to say that they left because of (voting rights).

“You have to find special people who it resonates with, and who are willing to deal with the consequences.”

Any volunteers — and prospective Volunteers (among others) — will have to weigh those priorities in the months and years ahead.