There was “The View,” “The Daily Show” and “The Pivot.”
There was a sit-down with Trevor Noah and a chat with Jemele Hill.
Colin Kaepernick’s face has been ubiquitous over the past few days as he’s been promoting his new book “The Perilous Fight.” But one thing has been conspicuously absent from the former NFL quarterback’s press tour: a single probing question.
I get that Kaepernick wants to avoid tension while hyping up his memoir. He isn’t going to choose an interviewer he thinks might give him pushback.
But it’s been hard as a journalist to watch the wall-to-wall coddling of one of the most controversial figures of the past decade. To me, the story has become what’s not being asked.
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Some examples.
OutKick’s Bobby Burack noted the absurdity of the slave-trade comparison Kaepernick made during an interview with former ESPN analyst Ryan Clark. He said that he can draw a “parallel” between the combine and a slave auction because people are telling players to “strip down to your drawers.”
Never mind that the NFL is completely voluntary and has produced more Black millionaires than any other business in the country. To Kaepernick, it’s on par with one of history’s most brutal systems of human exploitation.
Dumb? Yes. But what’s dumber is that Kaepernick also said he’s been training every morning in case an NFL team gives him a call. In other words — this league reminds him of a horrifying institution … and he can’t wait to get back.
Kaepernick’s supporters will tell you that his protesting was peaceful. But he played a prominent role in the vilification of police that swept the country in the middle of last decade and again in 2020. The man wore pig socks. He compared police officers to modern-day “slave patrols.” And it’s this type of rhetoric that scared myriad police officers off the streets and led to a soaring Black murder rate.
Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer wrote a paper about this six years ago, in which he showed a direct connection between viral police killings and a reduction in police contacts in the cities in which they took place. In short, as scrutiny and criticism ramped up, officers got spooked about making a mistake and becoming front-page news. The results were record increases in murder in the Black community.
This phenomenon was most prominently displayed after George Floyd’s death in 2020, when police officers were stereotyped across the country and the Black murder rate saw a 2,500-victim increase from the year before. Kaepernick wasn’t single-handedly responsible for this, but he embodied the mentality that helped get a lot of people killed.
Again, another mark against Kaepernick’s “peaceful” persona. Hysteria gripped the country in the spring of 2020, with 19 deaths occurring in the first two weeks of the Floyd “protests” along with billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Tweets such as this couldn’t have helped.
“When civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction,” Kaepernick posted. “The cries for people will rain down, and when they do, they will land on deaf ears, because your violence has brought this resistance.”
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I don’t see a gentle soul simply trying to do what’s right with a quote like that. I see someone who’s lost his way. Regardless of Colin’s initial intent, there’s a strong argument that he made the country worse.
The way Kaepernick is hyped in certain circles, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are throngs of people who think he was on top of his game when he was essentially ousted from the league. But the guy went 1-10 as a starter in his final year with the 49ers, when he completed less than 60 percent of his passes and posted a QBR of 49.2.
He wasn’t a disaster— he threw 16 touchdowns against four interceptions — but he wasn’t nearly good enough to offset the distraction he’d become. Kaepernick made a choice to kneel and upset millions of Americans — some of whom thought he was disrespecting the flag, and others who thought he was pushing a false narrative in regard to the frequency of police killings. But if he could sling it like Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady or Drew Brees, he’d have found a roster.
Back in November of 2019, 25 NFL teams were expected to watch Kaepernick work out at the Falcons facility in Georgia. But three hours before said workout, he decided he wanted to change the location to a high school about 60 miles away without the blessing of the NFL. He claimed it was over an insufficient liability waiver.
The league — who Kaepernick had previously sued for millions — said the waiver was standard procedure. Who you believe is your call, but just like that, it seemed that the teams who were willing to take a look decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.
Kaepernick had to know that he didn’t have the leverage in that situation. But it’s unlikely that he cared. The notoriety he gained as an activist (which helped land him a multi-million dollar Nike deal) seemed to be satisfying enough. No need for the grind of a 16-game season to disrupt that.
But the people interviewing Kaepernick aren’t going to question his motives. They’ve seemed to have little interest in anything but fawning.
He took a knee — and everyone he talks to genuflects.
