Over the past few days, the 10 players on the Arkansas State University football leadership council came together. They wanted their voices heard before any decisions were made about the 2020 season.
The result was a 309-word, player-only statement released Sunday night that, in short, said they wanted to play despite the coronavirus pandemic.
"We wanted to put that out for our team, for our community, for our state, and just let everybody know that we feel safe here," redshirt junior quarterback Logan Bonner said. "We feel like this environment that we've been put in since we got here in the summer is the safest we could possibly make it. We actually feel safer here than we probably do at home. So we wanted to put a statement out to really let everybody know that we're trying to do everything to play and that we want to play."
The statement came amid a nationwide "We Want To Play" movement by prominent college football players, including Clemson's Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State's Justin Fields, who both expect to be top picks in the 2021 NFL Draft. The Red Wolves, though, are one of the only programs to have released a unified, player-only statement.
The statement came together over the weekend as reports circulated that the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences were on the verge of canceling fall athletics. ASU's leadership council approached Coach Blake Anderson and sport information director Jerry Scott to help them write the statement. After Anderson and Scott listened to their ideas and wrote a draft, the players approved it.
"They asked if they could say something. I told them it would be great if they would," Anderson said. "I was really proud of them taking the initiative. That's why they're in that room, to set the tempo and really the culture of our football team. And I thought they did a really great job."
The statement not only said they wanted to play this season, but also why they feel it's safe to do so.
"We feel that our campus, and specifically our athletics facilities, are the safest place we can be during this time as we have access to additional safety protocols and health officials," the statement read. "Even if we suspend the season, there is no guarantee that we won't contract the coronavirus and face risks, just like many others have who don't play sports."
When asked Monday what his pitch to the Sun Belt would be to keep the season alive, Anderson echoed what the players said.
"We know there is a risk of covid, but there is a risk of covid if we leave here. There's more structure here than anywhere else on the planet for these guys," he said. "And we love the game, we love each other, we're going to do nothing to put each other in harm's way. But we want a chance to do this. We accept the risk, and we're doing literally everything from physicals to EKG's to covid tests to social distancing -- everything that we have been asked to do, these guys have taken seriously. And we feel like this is the safest environment we could possibly be in.
"It's something that we absolutely love to do, absolutely something we want to do, and we feel like we deserve the opportunity to try and get it done. I understand everybody wants to keep us safe, so do we. But we think we can do that in the environment that we're in. And we want to do it together."
Anderson and Arkansas State are four days into fall camp and unsure when or if they'll play. The Sun Belt announced Aug. 4 its intentions to play a full 12-game schedule and, as of right now, still intends to.
But as more conferences move toward canceling, keeping players focused on the season is going to be one of the more difficult challenges, Anderson said.
"We can't worry about the Big Ten or the Pac-12. They've got their own problems, they're in a different part of the country than we are, different leadership," Anderson said. "We've got to control what we can, and that's our attitude and our effort every day and our attention to detail of the protocols that are in place -- wearing masks, staying separated, cleaning things up, and doing everything we can to be selfless and think about the person next to them. But we can't worry about what the other leagues do and don't do."
Anderson said until they cancel the season, it's going to be business as usual.
As for the players, they're going to continue to advocate for a season.
"I just want to play ball," Bonner said. "Everybody wants to play ball because we've put too much time in to just give up."