The NCAA on Friday encouraged its 1,100 member colleges and universities to give athletes the day off from sports on election day, responding to grassroots movements of activism from players and coaches.
In response to nationwide protests of police brutality and racial injustice, Georgia Tech announced earlier this week it was giving nine fall sports teams a day off from athletic activities on Nov. 3 so athletes can vote in person.
UCLA followed with a similar announcement and Wisconsin said Friday it would also skip athletic activities that day.
“We just want them to exercise their responsibility to have their voices heard and vote," Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarex said. "I want to make that as easy as possible for them.”
At schools all over the country, coaches and players have organized team-wide voter registration efforts, marches and rallies. The Clemson football team helped organize a March for Change scheduled for Saturday on its campus in South Carolina.
The protests were sparked by last month's death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
The NCAA did not mandate a day off for athletes on election day, but instead encouraged schools to assist students in registering to vote and give them a day off from athletics to they could vote.
“We encourage students to continue to make their voices heard on these important issues, engage in community activism and exercise their Constitutional rights,” the NCAA said in a statement.
Eric Reveno, the Georgia Tech assistant men's basketball coach credited with starting the #AllVoteNoPlay movement on Twitter, said it was a step in the right direction.
“However, we need to move beyond a recommendation,” Reveno tweeted. “We need to act. The @NCAA needs to act. We need #AllVoteNoPlay in the rule books.”
A potential issue: Teams in all three divisions already have competitions scheduled for that day. In the Mid-American Conference, for example, Buffalo's football team is scheduled to play at Northern Illinois that Tuesday night.
The Division I college basketball season will start about a week after election day.
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