Eaton was the head coach in 1969, during the "Black 14" incident, in which he dismissed 14 black Wyoming players from the team for planning to wear black armbands during a game against the Brigham Young University (BYU) Cougars. At a victory against BYU the previous year, players from the Cougars had subjected them to racial epithets. A week before the upcoming game, the team's black members were reminded of the incident and also informed about the racial policies of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which owns and operates BYU, and which up until 1978 excluded black people from the church's priesthood as well as any temple ceremonies - also had been proscribed from proxy baptisms on behalf of the dead by David O McKay unlike his predecessors that permitted them for blacks) by Willie Black, leader of Wyoming's Black Student Alliance, and challenged them to do something about it. The day before the game, the players approached coach Eaton to tell him that they were planning to wear black armbands during the game in protest; Eaton forbade it. The players then arranged to meet with Eaton, intending to discuss with him the terms of their protest. According to Joe Williams, a team co-captain before he was suspended from the team, "We wanted to see if we could wear black armbands in the game, or black socks, or black X's on our helmets. And if he had said no we had already agreed that we would be willing to protest with nothing but our black skins."