Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick will receive the Muhammad Ali Center’s Humanitarian of the Year Award later this year.
The center told Reuters that it selected Kaepernick for his advocacy “against racial injustice” and support for underserved communities through his Know Your Rights Camp and other philanthropic efforts.
Lonnie Ali, Muhammad’s late wife and co-founder of the center, added:
“Colin has used his platform to advocate for equality, human dignity, and social change, even when doing so came at significant personal and professional cost.”
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Now, to reality.
Kaepernick is hardly worthy of an award bearing Muhammad Ali’s name. Ali risked his freedom and sacrificed the prime of his boxing career when he refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War. He was stripped of his heavyweight title, barred from boxing for more than three years and convicted of draft evasion.
Ali became a martyr. He paid a real price. Kaepernick did neither.
The popular narrative that Kaepernick sacrificed a thriving NFL career to stand up for marginalized communities is misleading. He had already been benched for Blaine Gabbert. In his final two seasons, he posted QBRs of 43.7 and 49.2.
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He had become unplayable.
Unlike Ali, Kaepernick was not on a battlefield alone. It was quite the opposite. Sports media and pop culture largely championed his national anthem protests. Nike made him the face of a major advertising campaign
Kneeling during the anthem proved financially rewarding for an athlete who would’ve had to otherwise settle for league minimum contracts.
Kaepernick and his defenders say the NFL blackballed him. In reality, no team wanted a backup-quality quarterback attached to a divisive political circus. Most players who kneeled during the anthem kept their jobs because their play warranted it. Kaepernick’s did not.
He had also become an inflammatory figure, denouncing July 4 as a racist celebration and comparing the NFL’s treatment of players to slavery and plantations.
Colin Kaepernick was more moron than martyr.
The Muhammad Ali Center should be ashamed to honor him. Then again, the center lost much of its prestige years ago. In 2022, it awarded Dr. Anthony Fauci its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Oh, how poorly that has aged.
Still, Kaepernick will use the award to promote his upcoming book, “The Perilous Fight.”
