privately about joining Kaepernick’ s protest. Bad faith operators at national sports outlets and talk radio intentionally maligned Kaepernick. Some demanded he provide solutions to problems he protested – problems that scholars, activists and politicians have been struggling to resolve for years.
To be fair, there have been some positive changes in the professional football game in recent years.
While the NFL reached a confidential financial settlement with Kaepernick before his collusion grievance, in which he claimed team owners conspired to lock him out of professional football after his contract with the 49ers expired, some minor player protests were permitted, even if they were superficial.
Colin Kaepernick stands with students and teacher of KIPP NYC for his Citizen of the Year award( 2017) for GQ Magazine. Credit: Colin Kaepernick’ s Instagram @ Kaepernick7
Players were allowed to put, watereddown, league-approved protest messages on their helmets. And after prominent quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes and DeShaun Watson created an anti-racism video in the wake of George Floyd’ s killing by Officer Derek Chauvin. The NFL allowed phrases like“ End Racism” and“ It Takes All of Us” to be painted in the end zone.
But that didn’ t last.
Rally for Colin Kaepernick and George Floyd. Credit: Colin Kaepernick’ s Instagram @ Kaepernick7
By 2026, on-field protest by NFL players had ended. And while the number of Black quarterbacks has increased over the last decade, the number of Black head coaches leading the NFL’ s 32 teams dropped from 7 to 3. More to the point, despite leading the 49ers to the 2013 Super Bowl and falling one victory short of returning the 49ers to the sport’ s championship game the following year, Kaepernick has been effectively banned from the NFL since his contract expired in 2017.
The NFL has been more accepting of the“ free speech” of players who have embraced the race-baiting MAGA movement than they were of Kaepernick’ s police brutality protest.
And what about the media’ s bloviating coverage of Kaepernick? In the fall of 2016, you couldn’ t turn on ESPN, Fox Sports News, open the sports section of nearly any newspaper, or go on Twitter without seeing, hearing or reading critical discussions of Colin Kaepernick’ s protests.
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Too often, the coverage bent the moral arc of the universe away from a just treatment of the point he tried to make.
And all of this occurred during a time when the number of Black sports journalists was being thinned out.
ESPN, the selfproclaimed“ Worldwide Leader in Sports,” has all but purged