up for a major game this weekend if the university president tim wolfe did not resign. the coach of the team supporting the students. gary pinkel sending out a tweet saying we are united. former mizzou student alumni michael sam also sending out a tweet earlier saying that he stood with the players of the very team that he played for before. senator claire mccaskill says it is clear a message be sent to ot students i m resigning as president of the university of missouri system. my motivation in making this decision comes from love. i love m.u. columbia, where i grew up, and state of missouri.
that we find ourself in the place that we do. reporter: nearly half of the missouri tigers football team fueled the cause by threatening to stay off the practice field in protest. their head coach announced support with a single image of his players locking arms. the team was prepared to boycott its next game, a move which could have cost the school a million dollars. this morning a faculty walkout added even more pressure. missouri journalist and professor cynthia frisbee says she s seen it. i ve been here 18 years and this is nothing new. so i ve been called the word too many times to talk about it on camera and to write them all out reporter: jonathan butler has ended his hunger strike. the football players will be back on the field tomorrow. but the student struggle is far from over. so what happens next? the group at the head of this movement say they are still standing behind their long list of demands, some of which, jake, the university says are actually being taken int
this. we just got this tweet from former missouri player michael sam. he tweeted out in the last hour, if mizzou is truly a family we all must stand by concerned students. 1950. that s what the students who have been protesting have called themselves here. what you have though is this incredible showing at a time when people criticize the student athlete as only really caring about the athletics in many many cases. they re taking on this social climate at the university, black, white, and now the support of the coach. if they don t play saturday, the university could lose a million dollars. what do you make of this strong showing, rob, from these students? well, you said it exactly right in your introduction. this is not a story that really got national media attention until it became a football story. you talked about a team in the s.e.c. if there s one thing people in missouri can agree on is that they love the missouri tigers football team. they may disagree about what s going
they love missouri football and the threat of a sizable number of players walking out and causing them to potentially forfeit a game against byu, a game held at arrowhead stadium that s why there s so much money at stake. that s something that s going to be taken very seriously by people in that state. i was very interested to see coach pinkel came out in support of his players in what s on yously a very divisive issue. here you go from this photo, you don t just have black players there. you have the coach who is white. and then you have other players in this photo who are not african-american saying that they are concerned as well with the climate at this university. i am sure that there is division in that locker room, tamron, as to whether they should walk off and not play a football game because of what s going on. football players are there to play football. these are kids who are on scholarships. they only get 12 games or so a
directed at african-americans and other students of color. let s listen in to see if they ve worked out this technicality. is there a way that we can increase the volume on this that might help? again, we are waiting for them to work out the audio situation here. but the university s governing board was set to hold an emergency meeting to address weeks of protests and anger that has been simmering at the campus in columbia, missouri for months now after a number of students have noted a series of racially charged incidents at the school. the school s football team, many of the players on the team, said they would not show up for practice and they would not show