Recently, as we’ve seen on the news, approximately a thousand people protested the fact that Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job. This protest has a reached a level of stupidity that I haven’t seen from a group of demonstrators in a long time. I find that this demonstration highlights two trends of stupidity, one that hse been encouraged by sports media, which is conflation of treatment and outcome. The other is something that has been pushed by the media altogether, which is this unwarranted witch hunt of the NFL.
First, the fact that these demonstrators protested in front of the NFL headquarters destroys their credibility in the first place. I’m not being obtuse with this question, but what does the NFL actually have to do with the fact that Colin Kaepernick hasn’t been signed to an NFL team? Teams aren’t signing him, that’s it. The NFL hasn’t suspended him one game, the NFL hasn’t fined him a dime, and the NFL certainly isn’t standing in the way of teams signing him. So… What would you like the NFL to do? What would you like Roger Goodell to do? Force a team to sign him? Place him on a random roster? Nothing. I can promise you that not one person protesting in front of the NFL headquarters could’ve coherently come up with a solution for the NFL or Roger Goodell specifically.
My head might explode the next time I hear Max Kellerman, Shannon Sharpe, or Talcum X moan and groan about how horribly Colin Kaepernick is being treated. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard his situation being compared to a bunch of NFL players who have taken part in significantly more heinous acts. Well, obviously there’s a difference because those players have been punished by the NFL and more importantly, were punished legally. In all actuality, Kaepernick is being treated the same as any other non-violent, non-rule-breaking NFL player. These demonstrators are just mad at the outcome of his own decision to protest the National Anthem while he’s in uniform. It amazes me that out of a thousand people marching, not one of them even thought that maybe protesting in front of the NFL Headquarters is a classic example of barking up the wrong tree.
What these demonstrators seem to forget is the fact that Colin Kaepernick is really just a back-up quarterback who brings an entire bad-for-business circus as part of the package if a team signs him. Seriously, why would any owner want to hurt his own business and alienate a large portion of his customers for a quarterback who won’t even generate any wins? This isn’t even just about the National Anthem; all you have to do is look at his Twitter feed. He’s clearly completely enamored with extremely left-wing politics and he’s inflicted these far left wing politics on fans. Was it OK for him to wear socks depicting Police Officers as oigs, or was it OK to wear a shirt with Fidel Castro’s face on it? Of course not, but because a large slice of the sports media sounds like his agent, they either ignore his these inflammatory messages or just make excuses for them. Despite the stupidity of the protest itself, I find that the media glosses over how inappropriate it is to bring politics, especially extreme politics, to a work environment. Here’s a question I’ve asked myself. Would it have been OK if he sat for the National Anthem to protest income taxes, and then in the press conferences after the game, draped himself in a Don’t Tread on Me Flag? Of course this type of protest wouldn’t fly and if this did happen, especially in a city like San Francisco, he would’ve been cut the next day and vigorously ridiculed by the media.
The reality of back-up quarterbacks is that it’s imperative to have one, but teams don’t generally bend their back over who a better backup quarterback is because in the scenario a team has to play a back-up quarterback, the team is doomed for the time being anyway. Think about it, who wins a Superbowl because of a back-up quarterback? The back-up quarterback is just there to make himself useful.
This has been a perfect opportunity to slam the NFL from the media and of course, the Kaepernick minions. Of course, all of this NFL blaming is nothing more than a lazy analysis of the issue at stake and rather opportunistic of the media to do what they can to discredit the NFL. This has been painted as a “Kaepernick vs. the NFL,” as if this is the modern day version of Brown vs. Board of Education. Of course, the media that is out to get the NFL any opportunity they get is eating this up. Of course, they Disney-fy this story by painting the NFL to be evil and Kaepernick and his minions to be brave people fighting oppression from these evil oppressors known as the NFL. Shaun ‘Talcum X’ King even wrote an article about why he’s boycotting the NFL because of its anti-Blackness. The same NFL that has produced more Black Millionaires than any business in world history.
