Mr. Pinkel said the main concern of the players was Mr. Butler. “My players deeply cared about this guy, and he was dying,” he said.

Though most players declined to speak Monday, a team captain, Ian Simon, said in a statement that the players “just wanted to use our platform to take a stance for a fellow concerned student on an issue.” He added, “We love the game, but in end of the day, it is just that; a game.”

Thousands of students and faculty members gathered Monday morning at the heart of the campus. At word of Mr. Wolfe’s resignation, some cheered, others hugged and cried, a few danced, and Mr. Butler said he would eat for the first time in a week.

The Board of Curators has the power to hire and fire top administrators, and the curators are appointed by the governor. But Donald L. Cupps, a member of the board, said Mr. Wolfe was not asked to leave, and resigned out of concern for the university. “We have a national image to protect and enhance,” he said.

Not everyone was pleased with the resignations. W. Dudley McCarter, a former president of the university’s alumni group, said alumni, in calls and emails on Monday, had expressed disappointment in Mr. Wolfe’s decision. “They feel like he was backed into a corner and was made a scapegoat for things he didn’t do,” Mr. McCarter said.

A series of racist incidents in the last few months spurred calls for change. Protesters said that the president at first did not take their complaints seriously, and that his later responses were not strong enough or swift enough.

The president of the Missouri Students Association, Payton Head, who is black, touched off the intense discussion of race in September when he posted on Facebook that a group of men had yelled racial slurs at him, and said it was not the first time he had suffered that kind of abuse at the university. His post was shared thousands of times, and drew widespread coverage.