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NY Times, June 17 2017
The Problem With Kaepernick’s Political Views: He Plays Football
By KEN BELSON
Maybe Colin Kaepernick is in the wrong league.
Last season, Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, set
off a national debate when he knelt during the national anthem before
games, as a way to shine a light on police violence and racial
injustice. Now a free agent, he has been unable to find a job, leading
to speculation that teams are steering clear of him because of his
controversial stance.
If Kaepernick were a basketball player, things might be different. In
the N.B.A., the biggest stars routinely share their opinions on a range
of thorny social issues. Top coaches, including Steve Kerr of the Golden
State Warriors and Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs, have been
critical of President Trump. The league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, was
widely lauded for permanently barring Donald Sterling, the former owner
of the Los Angeles Clippers, who was caught on tape using racist language.
But Kaepernick is trying to land a job in the N.F.L., a league filled
with players who talk proudly about toeing the line and keeping their
heads down. Coaches and team owners have an almost allergic reaction to
addressing political issues. The commissioner, Roger Goodell, speaks
often about patriotism. Few leagues spend as much time wrapping
themselves in the flag.
Never mind that N.F.L. teams have offered million-dollar contracts to
players convicted of animal abuse, domestic violence and other
transgressions. Kaepernick, it would appear, crossed an immutable line,
and he is now paying a price as teams hire journeyman backups and
younger, untested quarterbacks over someone who just a few years ago led
his team to the Super Bowl.
“He’s being singled out and not offered employment because of what he
did,” said Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity
and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. “The first
time he did it, I thought: This will be his last season.” The reason? “I
felt I knew the political reality in the N.F.L.”
The political reality is this: The league consists of a largely
conservative group of owners and, according to polls, a majority of fans
who did not support Kaepernick’s actions. One poll suggested that some
fans watched less football last season because of the anthem protest,
which spread to a handful of other players, helping push down television
ratings over all. Some fans, like Dave Ippolito, said they stopped
watching football entirely last season.
Ippolito, a retiree who lives not far from Cincinnati and is a lifelong
Giants fan, said he did not oppose Kaepernick expressing his views off
the field. But by protesting on the field, he said, he dragged politics
into the game.
“If you want to do stuff in your off hours, that’s fine, that’s your
right as an American,” Ippolito said, adding: “It’s time to play
football. It’s not time for politics.”
Ippolito’s views are far from universal. Some fans, in fact, applaud
Kaepernick. Last month, he had the 17th best-selling jersey in the N.F.L.
Those who believe Kaepernick is being shunned point to the fact that
about 20 other quarterbacks have been signed so far this off-season,
including Mike Glennon, who received a three-year, $45 million contract
from the Chicago Bears even though he threw only 11 passes the past two
seasons; Josh McCown, who signed a one-year, $6 million contract with
the Jets even though he is 37 and played for the one-win Cleveland
Browns last season; and Geno Smith, who received a $1.2 million,
one-year contract from the Giants after a dismal showing with the Jets.
Some football analysts say Kaepernick’s quarterback rating suggests his
skills have declined. His rating slipped to a mediocre 55.2 last season,
from a high of 76.9 in 2012, the year before he led the 49ers to the
Super Bowl. His backers, though, note that Kaepernick played on dreadful
teams in the past two seasons, when the 49ers won only seven games under
two different head coaches.
Others point to his style of play, which includes scrambling out of the
pocket, something many coaches eschew. Yet Michael Vick, who also
scrambled, found work in past years with three teams after he missed two
seasons while serving a jail sentence for animal cruelty.
Then there is money. Kaepernick was paid $14.3 million last year, and
teams may assume he wants to continue to be paid like a starter.
Though he has gone unsigned for more than three months, Kaepernick, now
29 with six years of experience in the N.F.L., may yet land a job, even
once the season begins in the fall, particularly since he appears
willing to be a backup, not just a starter. Quarterbacks are injured all
the time, and teams may view him differently if they need a replacement
in a pinch.
For now, though, Kaepernick is not getting on a team. Only the Seattle
Seahawks invited him for an interview. In one of the odder compliments,
Coach Pete Carroll said afterward that Kaepernick should be a starter in
the N.F.L., but the Seahawks already had a starter, so they were going
to pass. Kaepernick’s representatives say he has never insisted on being
a starter.
At least one of Carroll’s players, Michael Bennett, was skeptical of his
being passed over, saying Kaepernick’s inability to get a new contract
is evidence of the racial divide in the N.F.L., a league in which about
three-quarters of the players are black.
If Kaepernick does not find another job in the N.F.L., he will join the
list of athletes ostracized for political outspokenness.
One of them, Craig Hodges, a sharpshooting player on the Chicago Bulls
in the early 1990s, never played in the N.B.A. after he spoke openly
about police brutality and gave the elder President George Bush a
handwritten letter when his championship team visited the White House.
“I couldn’t play anymore at 32, and I was a three-time 3-point-shooting
champion and a two-time world champion,” said Hodges, 56, who is now a
basketball coach at the high school he attended in Chicago. “It was a
point in my life where I took a stand for a lot more people from where I
was from.”
Hodges said things were different now, thanks to social media, which has
made it easier for players to get out their side of a story. (Also, the
N.B.A. has evolved into one of the more politically progressive leagues.)
Kaepernick has declined requests for interviews, so his thoughts on why
he has not been hired must wait for another day.
But on Twitter, he continues to share his thoughts, including on Friday
after the officer accused of killing Philando Castile in Minnesota was
acquitted.
Kaepernick has also tried to show he is not alone. On Instagram he
posted a picture of several boxes of letters he described as fan mail.
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