Having had months to look back at the events at UM, and reading recently about the significant drop in Freshman enrollment since the initial tumult, it seems to me that the football team’s threat of action (a boycott) was real, or real enough to make the administration wake up and pay attention. I think there were other things at play in the arguments at UM back in 2015, including the fact that the school had just joined the $outheastern Conference and done relatively well in a short time.
What can colleges do to reverse a string of misfortune and decline? Columbia University in the Ivy League did it. The legacy of the Columbia riots in 1968 left a very bad taste in the mouths of alumni. By 1978 Columbia was still in a bit of a funk. Applicants were turning to Penn and Cornell rather than Columbia. Clearly Columbia returned to favor and today is a very “hot” school as far as high school seniors are concerned. Of course the biggest advantage that Columbia had was that the riots did not diminish the university’s academic standing. It is, after all, an Ivy League institution, therefore many kids will long to be granted admission no matter what. And in all honesty, it took until the late 90s for Columbia to fully rebound in popularity among applicants. The X factor for Missouri in all of this is the Athletic Department. Think of what would happen if the U Texas Longhorns football team decided to sit out a game on behalf of Jordan Edwards. Or if U of Oklahoma players sat down to protest the school’s actions regarding woman-beater Joe Mixon?
The riots were bad, but what also impacted Columbia was the state of New York City. The city was in financial crisis, and the area around Columbia was considered dangerous.
Penn was also impacted by similar factors. The least selective school in the Ivy league was not Columbia, it was Penn.
Starting in the early 80s, Wall Street, demonized by students during the Vietnam war era, became "cool’ again. The cities became prosperous again, and much safer. I imagine Columbia had something to do with improving the immediate area near its campus. but the bigger factors were environmental and societal and beyond its control.To a decent extent, its fortunes rise and fall with those of the city.
One other thing Columbia did to try to halt its declining popularity was to go fully co-ed. That happened in 1983.
IIRC, sometime around then Penn became the beneficiary of massive endowment contributions, which helped it immensely.
Not sure how much of this can be applied to U Missouri. Except I guess Walmart et al can donate more money to it, that would help probably.
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The Minnesota football boycott blew up in the players faces. Still, other teams may attempt it again, based on the perceived success at Mizzou.
The football coach also came out in support of the boycott, so the new head coach has specific language in his contract to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Moneydad; good points about Columbia. The good old days of relatively cheap apartments around Morningside Heights are long gone.
Gator88NE; I am a bit surprised by the restrictions in the coach’s contract. Would similar restrictions be incorporated into an employment agreement for a faculty member? Any employer can discipline an employee who bad mouths the organization, but whom is to define “bad mouthing?”