August means it’s time for Colin Kaepernick, the NFL’s first national anthem protester who hasn’t played in eight years, to announce to everyone that he’s ready to lead his team to a championship, and this year is no exception.
Kapernick was in Paris for the Olympics and gave an interview to Britain’s Sky News during his stay, during which he said he still wants to return to the field.
“We’re still training, we’re still working hard,” Kapernick said. said“So hopefully, one of the team owners will be open-minded.”
“This is something I’ve been training for my whole life so to be able to get back on the field would be a big moment for me and a big achievement. I think I can bring a lot to the team and help them win.”
Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem at the start of the 2016 season and continued pregame demonstrations throughout the year. The former 49ers player took the final snap in the final regular-season game of the 2016-2017 season.
But every year since that fateful season ended, Kaepernick has expressed a desire to return to the league, even going so far as to liken the NFL draft process to a slave auction.
In the series Colin in Black and WhiteIn “NBA 49ers,” narrated by Kaepernick, the former 49ers player appears in a scene in which NFL prospects are “poked, prodded and inspected for imperfections” before the NFL Draft. Later, in “The Combine,” players leave the NFL field and attend a mid-1800s slave auction, where white landowners inspect slaves for purchase.
In this scene, Kapernick says, “they” thus establish a “power dynamic.” The scene ends with an NFL coach and a slave auctioneer shaking hands with slaves in the background, establishing an intergenerational link between the professional sports selection process and slavery.
https://twitter.com/MythinformedMKE/status/1454561312990715904
No one knows why Kaepernick wants to return to the NFL if he believes it’s akin to slavery.
It’s not the NFL’s fault that he’s gone. The league arranged for Kaepernick to practice in front of all 32 teams in 2019. But Kaepernick rejected the league’s choice of venue and instead visited a local high school. The Raiders also invited him to practice in 2022, but former Raiders player Warren Sapp called it a “disaster.”
Some would love to bring Kapernick to practice, but it seems unlikely anyone will. The NFL season starts on Sept. 5.
