Kerr Report Q&A: Jack Sorenson and Ben Kimpler
Two area MAC football players discuss season cancellation, player compensation and their football futures
(Photo Credit: Miami University)
August is the month on the calendar when college football not just injects itself into the cultural bloodstream, it becomes the dominate panacea.
Yet this year, conversation is not about who are the most likely teams to make the college playoff. It’s about what conference is postponing until 2021 and what leagues still plan to kick off Labor Day weekend.
Last Saturday (August 8), the Mid-American Conference became the first FBS conference to cancel its fall season. Thousands of lives are impacted by the decision, including two Chicagoland players.
In 2019, Jack Sorenson and Ben Kimpler were key contributors on an Miami of Ohio team that won a MAC Championship. Sorenson, a wide receiver for the RedHawks, is a 2016 Stevenson High School graduate (Lincolnshire, IL) and member of the team’s 2014 Class 8A state title team. Kimpler is a defensive end for the RedHawks and starter on the Libertyville High School’s 2015 Class 7A state runner up.
Both intended to play for Miami of Ohio this fall as fifth-year seniors.
Sorenson and Kimpler talked to The Kerr Report Tuesday about the conference’s decision to cancel the season, the #WeWantToPlay movement, amateurism and compensation for college athletes and their own football futures.
The Kerr Report: What was your reaction when the MAC announced it was cancelling the fall season?
Sorenson: I think we knew it was probably coming. Even when you know it’s coming it’s still shocking. We were sitting around one of my buddy’s apartment and one of them got a tweet on his phone. We didn’t believe it. We started scrolling down and there were more tweets. Right after that we got a text from our coach and then a team meeting.
Kimpler: I was devastated to find out. This year is the most ideal situation for us and for the team. Me being a fifth year senior and being the oldest guy out there and everything falling into place. My thought that first day was, ‘will this be the end for me?’ Selfishly going out my senior year and the school getting a MAC championship and playing another season of course I want to do that.
Sorenson: It’s really devastating. One of my best friends is Tommy (Doyle, a fifth-year senior offensive lineman) and is one of the big name recruits and you start to think, ‘will I have a season with these guys.’ You have all these expectations of what your senior season is going to look like as a freshman and you write up in your head and then you finish the (2019) season and we win a MAC championship and you are like, ‘that’s awesome’ and we were returning mostly all of our guys and you are like, ‘let’s do it again.’ It’s so much fun to finish with the guys you start with and that’s what I initially thought is ‘am I going to have the year I thought I was going to have with the guys I came in with?’
TKR: Do you agree with the decision to cancel the fall season?
Kimpler: I understand where they are coming from. Football is the most contact sport out there, especially playing in the trenches on the d-line. You are in hand-to-hand contact on every snap and face-to-face with someone doing the same thing and you hope they had quarantined themselves.
Sorenson: It’s so hard to travel and put people on buses and play games and have a normal season without crossing lines and doing something that could cause someone to test positive. I respect it. Whether it’s right or wrong I don’t think it’s my place. I’m not the head of a huge corporation like the MAC so I think they did what they thought was best for the universities for themselves and the players and I respect that.
Kimpler: There are so many things we don’t know about the virus. Five months ago if you are an 18-to-25 year old and if you got the virus two days you are not feeling well and then you are back to normal. What hit me the most was this Indiana kid (IU football player Brady Feeney) who is a young guy (325 pounds) who had it and had a heart problem and we’re seeing more cases of athletes with inflamed hearts. We can’t play by NFL rules where you can have a bubble around every one and make sure everyone is with everyone else and have the ability to test every day. With college athletes being amateurs and having schools take on the liability. I respect the decision 100 percent.
Sorenson: Personally I wish the players had a little more voice in what was going to happen with their futures. At the end of the day they make the decision for us and I wish we had more say in that.
(Photo Credit: Miami University)
TKR: Arguably the two most prominent college football players, Trevor Lawrence of Clemson and Justin Fields of Ohio State, are very vocal on social media of late. They are advocating for player’s rights, even suggesting a player’s association for college football. What do you think of these ideas?
Sorenson: I think it is absolutely awesome that we are creating space for players to voice their opinions. That is how it should be. I don’t think that anyone should not get the chance to speak what they feel so I think it’s awesome what they are doing. I don’t know how much impact we can make in changing the season or bringing it back this fall but promoting players to have a voice and taking a stand with what they want and what they feel is best is something I will always support.
Kimpler: We want to play. I feel like players should have a voice. The way I feel about it is were are that amateur sport. For years and years we weren’t allowed to make money off our name and likeness and you can’t promote yourself to get free stuff. But that is now changing where players can get paid for likeness and image and that is one more stepping stone to branch out and speak for themselves.
TKR: When you consider how much money is floating through college athletics, I think public sentiment is shifting towards players receiving compensation. Even the NCAA has come out in favor of athlete’s receiving compensation on name, image and likeness. But they’ve done so kicking and screaming and only after state court rulings have forced their hands. What do you say to those who still hold onto the idea that room, board and tuition and a cost of attendance stipend is still a pretty good deal for college athletes?
Sorenson: It’s a free country and and you can have your opinion. Where I stand is the people who look in, that aren’t a part of the NCAA, I’m not going to go in and tell you how to run your family. I’m not going to tell you how to do your job. It’s OK to have an opinion but I think it gets a little disappointing when people think they know what’s best when they’ve never been through what we’ve been through and all they see are the benefits.
Kimpler: You hear water cooler talk of guys who say, ‘well, we should get paid more, we should get paid more.’ Then you have the other guys that are like, ‘hey man, just suck it up. You are getting a free education, you are getting free meals, a free roof over your head to do something that you love.’ It’s not like we are grinding out logistics staring at a television monitor.
TKR: Its almost as if there’s two different issues eroding trust here. One, is the virus and the fall season. University presidents are making decisions on the 2020 season and we don’t know if science and data is the main driver of those decisions as they claim. Then you have the player compensation issue which was an under current well before the virus became a thing and how you have athletic departments and universities making millions and millions of dollars off the backs of essentially free labor.
Sorenson: If you are a salesman and the only thing you got in return for making the company you work for millions of dollars was they paid for your food and they paid for your health insurance and your house and nothing extra extra, I think you’d be disappointed and not as motivated to work and make them all this money. I’m not saying that’s incentive as to my motivation to keep on working but that’s a little unfair. If you look at the real world people are compensated for the hard work they put in. And the return they give their employer. We are not given that and I think that’s disappointing especially when all these other colleges students have time to make money and they have scholarships as well that pay for their schooling.
Kimpler: There is a way to go about it for these bigger name players. Even if they opt out (of playing in the spring) they will still get drafted as high as they would. Of course the Power 5’s control everything. They could branch off and do what they want to do. The G5’s (Group of 5 conferences, which include the MAC) when they have the opportunity to play these bigger schools and get the big money payouts, it’s huge for us as it brings in half the money for the whole year. We played at Iowa, Cincinnati and Ohio State (in 2019). These are three big games that for small schools drives a lot of the profit and the net value of the team.
Sorenson: People on the outside don’t see that we have to wake up and take class and do everything that the other students do and on top of that if we want to have real world experiences like an internship, we have to fit that in. Some of these kids have financial situations back home they have to figure out. Some of these guys are the man of the house due to family situations. I don’t think people see the full picture all they see is the training facilities we get, the free education we get, this, this and this. But they don’t see the things that we don’t get. We don’t get to go to parties we don’t get to do all these different things we make insane sacrifices for our dreams and people don’t see that. I think we should be compensated we should have the ability to use our name and our brand and what we’ve worked our whole life as a form of return. That’s just my opinion, lost in a wave of a million others.
TRK: If there is a spring season in 2021, what are your plans?
Sorenson: I plan to come back and play. I have my personal goals. I don’t want football to end after college. It’s very important for me to get my body in shape that the scouts can see as an NFL body. More importantly, you look back at your high school carer and you say, ‘damn, I wish I could have done this, I wish I could have created this memory’ and now I have this understanding that this will be the last moments I will have as a college football player and I want to cherish them and do whatever comes after it and do as much as I can to control those things I can control.
Kimpler: I was going to hunker down on football and take classes I wouldn’t say were easy but broad enough to help me out with management classes or market me as a person. But now since we are playing in the spring I get the opportunity to have another full year of school paid for.
Sorenson: I want to work on my MBA and get an internship and set up my life for after football and being here allows me to set up a solid foundation whether the NFL works out or doesn’t work out (Sorenson graduated in the spring with a degree in marketing).
Kimpler: I do want to try for the NFL. I’ve got my degree (sport leadership and management) and I could use this opportunity to opt out and start the real world. But why not stay in college and be around the boys as long as I can? I hope the NCAA will allow us to have a season. I’ve devoted my time to Miami and whenever my time us up, that’s when I’ll be done. No matter when the next season is, I’ll be out there.