COLUMBIA, Mo. — Less than a month before its season-opening game against No. 3 Alabama, the Missouri football team canceled Friday's practice and instead addressed the racial justice issues that have captured the nation's attention once again this summer.
Mizzou became the latest college football team to cancel a practice this week in response to Sunday's violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot in the back seven times by a white police officer.
Nearly two hours after Friday's practice was scheduled to conclude, the team released the following statement: "On today, August 28, 2020 (the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech) we as the Mizzou Football Team, with the support of our coaches, decided to cancel practice in order to focus on the current state of our country.