Big 12 anti-racism campaign to run during games

After an offseason where social justice issues rose to the forefront, the Big 12 Conference is instituting a new anti-racism campaign starting this week and raised the possibility that players may be on the field during the national anthem, commissioner Bob Bowlsby said Monday.

The conference has produced two public service announcements that will run during games, and another message will be produced for each individual school that they can use during games or on scoreboards in their stadiums.

Additionally, schools will be wearing a social justice message on the front left of their uniforms, as well as a black Big 12-branded unity sticker on the back of their helmets.

“Each of our schools will be doing a unity message as part of its pregame show,” Bowlsby said. “We’re using a wide variety of our platforms to do the advertising and the programming that will make a difference.”

Bowlsby said the conference is discussing whether players will be on the field during the national anthem, calling it an “ongoing topic.” In a normal pregame, performances by marching bands mean the players are in the locker room. But that could change with bands performing in the stands, or with no bands at all.

“This year will be a little different, because on an institution-by-institution basis, we’ll be making decisions based on how the anthem is performed. There’s a fair amount of institutional latitude,” Bowlsby said.

He also anticipated that players will continue to use their platform to speak out even during games, noting a moment Saturday when Stephen F. Austin players took a knee during the kickoff as a sign of unity, earning a delay of game penalty.

“I think there’ll be a lot of different recognitions of their profile and their concerns and we — within within some latitude — we encourage those things and want to make sure that student-athletes can find their voice and use their voice,” Bowlsby said. “Yet we also have to manage it so that they’re there or not significant disruptions of the contest as well.”

Off the field, he said the conference has also participated in and continues to support a voter registration program and has instituted an internship program for people of color.

“We have engaged the chief diversity officers from each campus,” Bowlsby said. “In an advisory group for us we’ve assembled a Black student-athlete council that’s one male and one female student-athlete from each campus that works with the diversity officers and works with the other universities.

“I think that systemic racism is not going to go away anytime soon. But hopefully we can make some progress and that’s certainly our intent.”