Photo Credit: Colin Kaepernick/Instagram
History was made over the weekend with former 49ers player Colin Kaepernick when he had a workout to show the NFL he still had it so he could be considered to be signed. Well, the NFL offered him a workout, he accepted and 1 hour before it was scheduled to begin, he moved it to another location over disagreements about the media not being allowed. He wanted the media for transparency’s sake. He also was asked to fill out a form saying he wouldn’t sue the league if he wasn’t signed. He declined. Also note that if the media was there, they could show how well he did to report back on in the event he’s not signed. Well reports of his throwing arm being “elite” came from one team and rebuke from others from not following the league’s plans and instead setting his own rules.
Well, since only 6 of the 32 teams showed up to his practice, his camp sent footage of his training to all of the NFL teams for them to be able to watch and judge for themselves within 24 hours. After the workout, he had a message for the NFL which was him saying, “We’re waiting for the 32 owners, the 32 teams, Roger Goodell, all of them to stop running. Stop running from the truth, stop running from the people. We’re out here, we’re ready to play, we’re ready to go anywhere.”
As we said earlier, there are a lot of people who had mixed feelings about Kaepernick’s behavior over the weekend including Stephen A. Smith who said Kaepernick didn’t really want to play football but used the event to “make noise” and “control the narrative. Burgess Owens said he was entitled and represented all of the kids graduating liberal colleges who want to dictate things to prospective employers and said that’s not how the real works.
There’s a key component to all of this that’s intentionally being ignored again and that is that the purpose of a protest is to risk something for a point. The protests began over police brutality. The response was that he protested the flag. He said it was police brutality… So you can see there was an intentional avoidance of the subject. If he just wanted to play, of course he would have gone to the NFL’s scheduled workout. If he did that, he would have ignored the fact that he felt the league didn’t want him protesting and ignored the original issue at hand. So whether you agree or not with his actions, he remained true to his cause and going along with the NFL’s actions would have essentially been him capitulating and stating that his efforts over the last 3 years didn’t mean anything. As of this moment he still isn’t signed but we’ll continue to report on what happens.
