So, did the exploitation of Justin Fields end when tOSU called off the season while the exploitation of Trevor Lawrence continued when Clemson elected to play?
Because for all of this exploitation, Justin Fields is desperate to play, and he is being denied that option and was told what to do. While Trevor Lawrence, who could elect to not play and has more access to information about the decision to play or not play than anyone, chose to play, while also leading the players movement for the season to start. It's a popular narrative to claim that colleges are exploiting the athletes, but in this day and age, athletes have never been better informed and have never been more willing to speak out to assert their rights. While a number of college players have opted out (which is a good thing), the vast majority of the athletes want to play football (and all other college sports) and are outraged when they have been denied the ability to play.
In actual practice, the narrative that football players (and other college athletes) who want to play are a bunch of brain-washed dopes that don't know what is good for them is simply wrong. College athletes want their schools to provide a safe environment for them, and if the school provides reasonably available protections and protocols, they want to play. We are going to go through this again soon when basketball is about to start up, and it's going to play out the same way. The vast majority of athletes want to play and columnists/talking heads that are too lazy to look beyond the conventional "see, how these schools are exploiting these poor ignorant athletes and forcing them to play" will write/blabber on with the same uninformed thoughts that they have been spewing for the last 20 years.
