NEXT-LEVEL CHANCE
With Nike boost, exiled QB has opportunity to do, say more
Just deal with it, America. Love him or loathe him, Colin Kaepernick’s place in history will outlive us all.
And now it seems his platform just grew exponentially.
With Nike, a major NFL sponsor, enlisting him as the face of a campaign commemorating the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” movement, Kaeper- nick has new juice that provides a remarkable opportunity for him to take his activism to an all-world level. Talk about being a global icon.
Here’s to hoping that Kaepernick, way too publicly silent during his exile, takes the ball and scampers to the end zone in promoting his worthy cause.
With a collusion grievance against the NFL, Kaepernick, the first pro football player to take a knee during the anthem — protesting the killings of unarmed African-Americans by police and other social injustices — might have taken his last snap as an NFL quarterback.
Yet in another sense he might be only beginning to build his legacy.
In the Nike ad, featuring a black-andwhite image of Kaepernick’s face, the text reads: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
For Kaepernick, “everything” is apparently the once-promising career as a double-threat quarterback. But as the NFL prepares to kick off its 99th season on Thursday, it’s also apparent that the walking symbol of resistance has a bigger presence now than he ever had in leading San Francisco to a Super Bowl.
After all, the Nike ad prompted a presidential tweet Tuesday, with Donald Trump deriding it as a “terrible message.”
No, Kaepernick isn’t destined to be enshrined at Canton, Ohio. Instead, his relevance as the quarterback who ignited national dialogue and perhaps, change, likely will be marked at the Smithsonian. Generations from now, he might be remembered as the Ali of his time, the Paul Robeson of the era, a Curt Flood with a runpass option.
Even so, Kaepernick’s silence since opting out of his 49ers contract in March 2017 has been striking.
He surely has a deft touch when spreading messages on social media, typically with reposts of content from others that reflect his views or with photographs that bear significance, rather than with words from his own mouth.
While he has been widely hailed for donating $1 million to social causes and through his “Know Your Rights” foundation, he’s largely left it to supporters to continue to state his case … while vocal detractors have likewise remained active.
Given the boost from Nike, perhaps we’ll hear more from the man himself.
As was the case even before he filed the grievance against the league, Kaepernick has essentially stiff-armed the idea of expressing himself publicly.
Last year, “GQ” named Kaepernick as its “Citizen of the Year,” and while he posed for photographs, he did not grant the magazine an interview for the accompanying story.
On a rare occasion when Kaepernick indeed elected to make public comments in recent months, he gave a stirring speech upon accepting the Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International. The speech, in the Netherlands, went for nearly seven minutes, with a passionate Kaepernick mentioning three victims of police shootings by name — Tamir Rice, Philando Castile and Stephon Clark — and defending the protests that have flowed accordingly.
“We protest because we love ourselves and we love our people,” Kaepernick said.
It was refreshing to see the quick response and positive vibe in the statement Tuesday from Jocelyn Moore, the NFL’s new executive vice president for communications and public affairs, which in part read, “The social justice issues that Colin and other professional athletes have raised deserve our attention and action.”
A better response from the league would be for a team to give him a legitimate opportunity to compete for a job.
Just check out some of the quarterbacks signed by NFL teams since Kaepernick was, well, banished: Jeff Driskel. Brad Kaaya. Zac Dysert. And so on. The idea that the NFL is always a meritocracy built on true competition is a myth, when considering politics, options and money.
Kaepernick should still get a shot. Yet the reality is that he is better positioned now to ultimately throw his best passes as a humanitarian for the ages.