The allegation that former Ohio State cornerback Marcus Williamson tweeted claiming that an image of Trayvon Martin was used in a 2017 team meeting during Urban Meyer’s tenure as head coach has been confirmed, according to another former Buckeye player, Tyvis Powell. Williamson’s tweet gained traction after Ohio State’s Rose Bowl victory over Utah and emerged into a long thread that included a plea for college football players to “[k]eep putting pressure on these institutions to make meaningful change in athletics [and] our communities.”
Meyer initially stated that a photo of Martin was never used but then learned from Powell’s probing of former players that a support staffer showed the well-known picture of Martin in a hoodie to explain the team’s policy prohibiting this attire only in meetings. Although the staffer apologized and Meyer said that he and other coaches were not present at the specific meeting Williamson referenced, this revelation takes another jab at Meyer’s coaching legacy after his recent NFL firing by the Jacksonville Jaguars. It also revives debate on decades-long analyses of how racism has impacted African American athletes in big-time college football programs.
I will be addressing the thread in Williamson’s tweet in my Sports and Icons class, a critical and expository popular culture course at Ohio State’s Lima campus that examines the significance of U.S. sports as a platform for social justice. Many of the grievances that Williamson voiced on Twitter are some of the same issues analyzed in “Pay to Play: Race and the Perils of the College Sports Industrial Complex,” a text that I use in my course that was published in 2017.
“Pay to Play” was written by Louisiana State University professor Lori Latrice Martin, University of Nevada professor Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, and Berea College professor Nicholas D. Hartlep. The authors mention Trayvon Martin in their chapter titled “Commodification of Black Bodies,” asserting that the media depicted him “as a criminal and a thug” after he was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman in 2012. They expound on this analysis by describing how young Black males are racially profiled by the way they dress and that Black men are often feared by others simply due to their physical appearance. On Twitter, Powell clarified how the OSU players explained to the staffer that using Martin’s photo was racially offensive.
The “Pay to Play” authors also discuss compensation for student-athletes, another topic that Williamson tweeted about when he argued that college football players should be paid “like the minor league players that they already are.” In a nonprobability sample of 150 respondents, Martin, Fasching-Varner, and Hartlep reported that a little over 62 percent believed that college athletes playing “high-revenue-generating sports” should not be paid.
This survey, however, was conducted before name, image and likeness (NIL) deals were approved. Williamson’s tweet on college athletes being paid is particularly interesting since the NCAA is in the early stages of NIL where student-athletes can partner with companies and make money off their brands through social media. Williamson was most likely referring to football players who may not get NIL endorsements. For example, not all Power 5 conference schools have a partnership like Brigham Young University football’s contract with Built Brands, a protein and energy bar company that is providing compensation to the entire team and giving scholarships to walk-ons.
Williamson’s tweets and allegations against Ohio State won’t completely be dismissed as bitter discontentment. His complaints about the mistreatment of players are also similar to some of the discrimination accusations that former Iowa University running back Akrum Wadley has made against the Hawkeyes in a pending lawsuit.
Williamson did graduate from OSU with a history degree in 2020 and came back for a fifth season, so he was regarded as a leader on the team although he ended his career before the Rose Bowl. Last year, he tweeted about how he gains strength from his faith in God after the Buckeyes’ victory against Penn State, quoting Isaiah 43:2 with a picture of him kneeling and praying in the end zone. Whether more comes from Williamson’s story remains to be seen, but it is evident that not every player’s experience at elite Power 5 schools is the same. As fans, we only see the results on the field. The meaningful change Williamson called for is still needed in college football.
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