That breeze — and the shivers that accompanied it — originated in Grambling, La., where the entire Grambling State football team, angry about a number of things they had every right to be angry about, had just refused to board buses headed for Jackson, Miss., and a scheduled Saturday game against Jackson State.

It was the first protest of its kind.

And it demonstrates once and for all just how much power college football players — and some other college athletes — hold in today’s money-centric college athletics world.

A cash-strapped Grambling University will now fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and lost revenue for forfeiting the game. It will deal with months, if not years, of negative PR that’s likely to drive away a number of future recruits and coaches. And it must work feverishly to placate donors and boosters, along with the Louisiana state government and the general public, who all must be questioning the leadership at the school today.

The annual budget, awful as it was, is now shot for Grambling, because jerking six figures from a football budget that was only around $2 million will do that. The school, which had already transferred nearly $2 million from its general fund to athletics, will undoubtedly be forced to make cuts, some of which will likely fall outside of athletics.

All of that because players didn’t get on the bus.

That’s quite a bit of power.

And it’s power every AD in the country had better fear. Because more and more, college athletes are coming to realize that not only are they getting hosed by some current NCAA rules, but that they have at least some power to do something about it.

Now, to be fair, the Grambling situation isn’t relatable to most schools, if any, on the Football Bowl Subdivision level, where the upper echelon of college sports teams compete. Grambling is on the Football Championship level — the old Division I-AA — where teams like Alabama State and other small-budget, small-fan base teams play.

The Alabamas and Auburns of the world don’t deal with issues such as unsafe flooring, staph infections, dingy training areas, 10-hour bus rides, skipped meals on the road or substandard equipment.

All of that, plus administrative in-fighting that led directly to the firing of former head coach Doug Williams, plagued the Grambling program.

And many of those things plague other SWAC teams. ASU has vastly improved its facilities over the last few years, but it wasn’t long back that a player stepped through the floor of the old training room, which was housed in a mobile trailer.

Those everyday safety issues at FCS schools are a product of school administrators who refuse to accept reality — that their fan bases and donor bases simply can’t support life at the Division I level. The SWAC should be a Division II league, where rules and requirements would save the member schools millions of dollars each year. Not to mention, the teams could compete on the national stage.

At the BCS-level schools, where the strength and conditioning coaches outnumber the total coaches at many SWAC schools, the problems are different. But they, too, are nothing a walkout won’t solve.

Because if a forfeit worth hundreds of thousands of dollars will make some folks take notice, how about one worth 10s of millions?

That’s what the average game day at an Auburn or Alabama means to the school and the surrounding towns. Not to mention, with national title and bowl game invitations at stake, the dollar figure only climbs higher.

What happened at Grambling, coupled with the recent All Players United movement and a steady increase in participation of amateur unions, players are becoming more aware that they hold more cards than they’ve realized.

One day soon, they might notice that the guys blowing the whistles at practice each afternoon are driving home in Mercedes, raking in millions yearly and are coaching under guarantees that ensure their pay regardless of job performance. If those players ever compare all of that to the risk they’re taking, with little or no insurance, and the one-year scholarships they’re provided, maybe things don’t seem so fair.

And maybe one sunny fall Friday, the Alabama team doesn’t board the bus for Starkville, Miss., or Nashville, Tenn., or Auburn.

Chilly indeed.

• MCT Campus