Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and more of the biggest names in college football pulled an epic rope-a-dope to announce their support for a players association

• Several prominent college football players, including Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields, called for the formation of a players association.
• The call came after players from the Pac-12 and Big Ten had already put out public statements outlining their wishes for safety protocols and player assurances for the 2020 season.
• While the 2020 season is now on the brink of postponement, the players' collective effort, and how they executed it, could have major ramifications for college football.
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Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and several other prominent players across college football shared a post calling for the establishment of a college football players association on Sunday night.

The move came after a masterful bit of seeding from the players. Over the weekend, Lawrence and Fields shared several posts indicating that they and other college athletes wanted to play out the 2020 season.

With players largely left out of the debate over whether or not college football would happen in the fall, having two of the most prominent players in the sport raise their voices got the attention of plenty of commentators.

But Lawrence and Fields weren't done with their message. A few hours after their initial posts, both players shared an image promoting the hashtags #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay, giving a full picture of their wishes for the coming season.

"We all want to play football this season," the statement began, before listing off a series of goals for their organized effort, including:

• Establish universal mandated health & safety procedures and protocols to protect college-athletes against COVID-19 among all conferences throughout the NCAA.
• Give players the opportunity to opt-out and respect their decision.
• Guarantee eligibility, whether a player chooses to play the season or not.
• Use our voices to establish open communication & trust between players and officials; ultimately create a college football players association. Representative of the players of all power 5 conference.

The players' last point is also the most monumental, as it gets at the possibility of a larger effort to organize players for collective action.

According to Dan Murphy at ESPN, the message came together quickly, crafted by more than a dozen players from across the Power 5 conferences.

"The beautiful thing is now we're all on the same page," said Stanford defensive lineman Dylan Boles told ESPN. "We made history tonight."

The effort built off of the momentum of the #WeAreUnited campaign put forth earlier by Pac-12 athletes, as well as the #BigTenUnited group. Both argued for further health and safety protections heading into the 2020 season. Combined with the #WeWantToPlay effort from Lawrence and others, college football players crafted a message uniting players in the sport across the country.

"We got down to talking and agreed that both of our goals are aligned with each other," Boles told ESPN. "We all want to play this year. We just want to make sure players have a say in this thing."

Because of how Lawrence and Fields made their announcement — first emphasizing their desire to play, and then adding their call for a players association — the players helped catch the attention and early support from some commentators who might not immediately be behind the idea of collective action from college football players.

As things stand, the group's effort might not be enough to save the 2020 college football season — several Power 5 conferences are already reportedly set to announce the postponements of their seasons in the coming days.

Regardless of how the 2020 season plays (or does not play) out, the players' call for collective action is a significant one that could have major ramifications for the future of the sport.

In just the past few months, college football players have already proven how much power they can wield with their collective voice, from the #WeAreUnited campaign across the Pac 12 to the efforts taken by athletes at Clemson, Texas, and other schools to change the names of on-campus buildings that had been named after slave owners and segregationists.

For the players, the work is far from done, but the clear intention put forth in the statement, and the results of the acts of organizing that teams and conferences have already undertaken, show that college football and athletics as we know it could have some big changes coming soon.

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