Several of Michigan’s football players joined a small gathering Saturday in protest of the Big Ten’s decision to postpone fall football due to COVID-19.

To a man, they would rather have been in Seattle.

It’s not that they didn’t want to be there to plead their case, of course. They did just that enthusiastically, even realizing their words would probably fall on deaf ears. They had even initially planned to make their way down South University to President Mark Schlissel’s house, but that plan was foiled due to construction up and down South University St.

“It’s all torn up,” former Michigan All-American defensive tackle Chris Hutchinson, father of junior defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, shrugged.

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So it became a march down State Street to the campus Diag with maybe a few hundred people, head coach Jim Harbaugh among them.

"I don’t know how much it will help,” Aidan Hutchinson said of the gathering outside the Michigan Stadium tunnel before the walk, resignation in his voice. “I’m just glad we’re all here and all supporting it. We’re all fighting the fight.

“We all just want to play football. I think we all feel we’re healthy, so we all just want to play.”

“Somber” might be the best way to describe the players who did show up, probably a dozen or so.

“Coming here is kind of sad. Today we’re supposed to be at Washington,” defensive tackle Jess Speight said. “Then we were supposed to have Purdue here. Today would have been the day the buses would have pulled up and you’d have seen a parking lot full of people …”

Instead it was dozens. The fact that it was a perfect fall afternoon, just cloudy enough to keep it from being too hot, wasn’t lost on them, either.

Redshirt junior quarterback Dylan McCaffrey, one of the potential starters (though in a heated battle with Joe Milton for the job), had waited a long time for his opportunity. Today could have been the day all of his hard work paid off.

“It definitely feels different,” McCaffrey said. “When we really sit down and think … we should be in Washington right now. I know that bums out a lot of the team.

“Even just coming here on a day that would be a great game day and not being able to play is a hard pill to swallow, frankly. But we’re trying to stay hopeful that something soon will arise, and we can still get rolling at some point.”

All they’ve got is hope, he added, noting “it will get you down” without it. They continue to work each day as though there will be a game tomorrow.

Yet they also keep waiting for a new schedule with no real plan in place. Harbaugh said he’d texted and e-mailed Schlissel, but he had yet to speak with him.

That alleged lack of transparency was one of the sorest of the sore spots among the players.

“The decision all came out and it seemed, from our point of view, a little shady,” McCaffrey said. “We didn’t hear anything. We were getting our information from twitter, and we’re the ones it’s directly affecting, unfortunately. We just feel as if the decision was made by a bunch of people it didn’t directly affect.

“I think [Schlissel] could change a lot. I think a lot of those guys mean well, but don’t really know how important this is to us. The fact that we’ve worked so hard our entire lives … a lot of us have waited for four years now for an opportunity to play this season. To have that stripped from us is very personal.”

They were encouraged when they got the initial schedule, McCaffrey said, before getting the rug pulled out from under them. They had three full team tests in a row with zero COVID cases, he reported, and were doing everything asked of them.

“Then our season got stripped from us right at a tome were looking up for us — up for as a program, up for us as player, in general,” he said. “We’re just kind of here to almost vent, and hopefully something changes in the process.”

But none of them seemed very optimistic.

“I’ve heard some rumors about October 10, but I don’t know,” Aidan Hutchinson said. “I see some stuff on twitter, but that’s pretty much it.”

And if they had their way, they’d be on the field.

“[We’re here] to get the word out it’s not our decision not to play, at all,” McCaffrey said. “Our players were fully supportive of it.”

To the point that he and his teammates would be ready to go tomorrow if asked, he added. Now it looks like November at the earliest.

They’re just hopeful for an opportunity, whenever it may come.

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