MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The University of Minnesota football team’s boycott started with a bold demand for apologies and a threat to skip a bowl game if 10 teammates suspended after a sexual assault investigation weren’t reinstated.
It ended less than 36 hours later, the university leadership never blinking, and the players backing down amid pressure from many who read details of the allegations.
The Golden Gopher players announced Saturday they plan to play in the Holiday Bowl, rescinding their boycott after two days of meetings with attorneys, school President Eric Kaler and athletic director Mark Coyle.
“As a team we understand that what has occurred these last few days and playing football for the University of Minnesota is larger than just us,” receiver Drew Wolitarsky said.
The school declined the players’ request to reinstate the suspended players.
The team will now go ahead with its Dec. 27 game against Washington State in San Diego after getting assurances that those accused will get a fair hearing next month.
Wolitarsky, reading from a statement, said after many hours of team discussion and speaking with Kaler, “it became clear that our original request of having the 10 suspensions overturned wasn’t going to happen.”
And many of the players who made the initial stand Thursday had not read the university’s 82-page report detailing the woman’s specific allegations.
The university kept the details private under federal law, but players saw it after KSTP-TV published it Friday. The details fractured the group’s resolve, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly for the group.
The Star Tribune of Minneapolis first reported how the report affected the group’s thinking.
Kaler and Coyle issued statements Friday, and reiterated to the players in a meeting Friday night, that they had no intention of changing their decision after an internal investigation determined the suspended players violated school conduct codes in an encounter involving a woman and several players at an off-campus dorm Sept. 2.
The Holiday Bowl is one of the most lucrative and well-known of the second-tier bowl games. The payout to the school was $2.8 million last year. Not including the New Year’s Six bowls that are tied to the College Football Playoff, the Holiday Bowl’s distribution was the fifth largest of the other 34 postseason games.
Four players were initially suspended for three games earlier this season while the police investigated allegations by a woman, who said several players pressured her into having sex with them after a season-opening win over Oregon State.
No arrests or charges were made and the players, who maintained the sex was consensual, were reinstated after a judge lifted a restraining order.
“She described it as a line of people, like they were waiting for their turn ... She recalls yelling for them to stop sending people in the room because she couldn’t handle it,” one of the reports said.