USA TODAY International Edition
NFL participation too little, too late
It was # BlackoutTuesday and NFL teams were determined not to miss it. The New Orleans Saints, New York Jets, Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers were among the teams tweeting the stark black screen with the symbolic hashtag attached. The 49ers turned their Twitter avatar black. They and the Saints even added the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”
These teams were of course simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest; in this case, social injustice, the oppression of African Americans and police brutality in the wake of the awful death of George Floyd.
Here’s a quote that sums up the day perfectly for all the NFL teams that participated in # BlackoutTuesday:
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Who said this? The owners of the Saints, Jets, Bears or 49ers? Their general managers? Their coaches? Any one of millions of Americans over the past few days?
No. Colin Kaepernick said that on Aug. 27, 2016.
Oh, what might have been. If only the NFL had Kaepernick now, to harness his peaceful message, his grace, his power; to proudly share him with the sports world and American communities at this terrible time. What a message it would have sent the day he signed, and what a message it would be sending today.
Instead, owners and GMs and coaches retreated into their own timid, mostly white and very privileged world, refusing to bring Kaepernick back into the league and utterly failing in their role as examples for the nation.
These so- called leaders were repulsed by Kaepernick because he kneeled on the sideline in peaceful protest during the national anthem. They chose to follow the lead of Donald Trump, who called Kaepernick “a son of a bitch,” rather than listen to the advice and counsel of their own players and community leaders.
As the events of the past week have shown, they made a monumental error. On this topic, history will not be kind to the NFL. The side- by- side photos we have seen across social media platforms over the past week should haunt NFL owners and officials for as long as they live: the quarterback kneeling to call attention to a horror that would threaten to overtake this nation, the police officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck.
The NFL should have known what it had in Kaepernick at many stages of this unfortunate saga, but certainly it knew in 2018, when Nike made Kaepernick the face of a very successful marketing campaign. Even Trump gave up bashing Kaepernick after that. Why? Apparently, capitalism trumps racism for our president. Younger consumers – a demographic that should be crucial to the NFL, as it will be around a lot longer than the aging, angry right- wing Trump base – apparently approved of Kaepernick and his message.
Still the NFL gave Kaepernick the collective cold shoulder and privately high- fived its good fortune that it didn’t have to deal with that troublemaker anymore.
Then came the George Floyd tragedy, the latest in a harrowing series of despicable African American deaths.
The league could have partnered long ago with this prescient man of peace. Instead, its teams now tweet out blackness, proud of themselves for the message they are sending, clearly knowing that if there’s football in the fall, the protests that Kaepernick started will come again, and they will be massive.