Five years ago, Ian Simon and more than two dozen of his Missouri football teammates had reached a tipping point.
They saw numerous racist incidents occur on Missouri's campus, and what they described as too much indifference from school president Tim Wolfe. The players then announced they would not take the field again until Wolfe resigned, part of a campus-wide protest for social justice. Wolfe eventually did step down, but in the interim, the players were inundated with death threats. One of those threats promised the players would be shot on the practice field.
"You'd walk on campus and a group of white guys or white girls would cross the street," Simon recalled this week.