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Kentucky players outline what they hope to achieve by walking out of Thursday’s practice
By Adam Spencer
Published:
On Thursday, the Kentucky Wildcats decided not to practice in protest of racial injustices continuing to take place across the country.
This follows in the footsteps of several pro sports games being canceled the past couple of days across soccer, baseball, basketball and hockey.
On Thursday afternoon, Kentucky players Luke Fortner and Josh Paschal addressed the media, explaining what they hope to achieve via their protest.
“We plan on reaching out to youth groups across Lexington,” Fortner said. “We plan on reaching out to the police and finding out ways that we can communicate and figure out a solution because it’s not a one-sided issue. It’s not. There’s a side to every single story, and we understand that and we are doing what it takes to get everyone together and discuss that. And we want our tangible solution right now to be to educate our youth, because that’s where it’s all starts. Like you said, it’s a generational problem. We want everyone growing up to be able to embrace differences with other people. We don’t want it to be something where, you know, I live here they don’t live here — why should I care? We want to be something where everyone is willing to embrace the differences of other people.”
Per reports, Kentucky’s action is now spreading to another SEC school, as Mississippi State is apparently boycotting practice, too:
Per sources at Mississippi State, the players are boycotting training camp practice today. Second team in the SEC to do so this week (Kentucky did earlier this week)
— Paul Jones (@PaulJonesOn3) August 27, 2020
We’ll see when Kentucky players decide to return to practice and monitor other potential boycotts across the league.
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 14 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.