Thursday, September 28, 2017

The NFL's Boycott of Colin Kaepernick is About Power

Lost in the Weird Pageantry of the NFL Players’ National Anthem Protests in Week 3 is that Colin Kaepernick is still unemployed and his cause forgotten.

Full disclosure: A friend of mine gave me this idea late one night as we were setting up Catan (I'm a nerd). She said that Colin Kaepernick’s protest threatens the NFL's power over its players, and that's why he doesn't have a job. And suddenly everything became clear.

Consider this a theory about why NFL owners took knees with their teams during the National Anthem in Week 3 and issued statements supporting their players’ free speech.

Imagine, if you will, a world in which the NFL's power is being challenged every day. Players have more access to mass media now than they ever had before. In the days when America was great, players could only speak directly to their fans through the news media. They had to be interviewed by someone--recorded or filmed--then broadcast into what was then mainstream media. Over the past twenty years, 'mainstream media' changed dramatically.

Now, in addition to having High-Definition cameras aimed at them constantly when they're on the field or court, they have direct access to fans via social media. I can tweet to Richard Sherman right now and tell him he needs to cool down on the field a little bit (maybe I should after his blow-up Week 3 in Nashville, but that's another article). And he can tweet right back. He can tweet to his 2.03 million followers whenever he wants. Being able to say whatever he wants whenever he wants gives him power, especially when you consider his writing skills and overall intelligence.

Power is a see-saw. If someone gains power, it means that someone else is losing it. In this case, players like Sherman and Michael Bennett have gained power using the media tools available to them at the NFL's expense.

High-profile athletes have always had the option to use the cameras on them to send a message. Muhammad Ali used the cameras to express his moral trepidation with the racial inequalities he saw and the Vietnam War. He certainly didn't need Twitter to express his views and challenge the racist, mainstream school of thought in the United States at the time.

Kaepernick decided to go old-school for his protest last season by using the cameras to express his dissatisfaction with the racial inequalities he saw around him. But unlike similar protests by athletes about police violence against black people--such as LeBron's and others--it cost Kap his job.

By now, if you're any kind of football fan, you can plainly see that Kap is better than at least a third of the starting quarterbacks in the league so far this season. The fact that Jay Cutler, who hung up his cleats after getting run out of Chicago for a broadcasting job, is on the field for the Miami Dolphins should be enough evidence that Kap belongs in the league. Here's some more evidence if you think Kap doesn't have a job because of his stats.

I assumed, until my friend opened my mind, that Kap doesn't have a job because the NFL owners who could use a new quarterback are racists. I thought they simply didn't care for his "disrespect of the flag" (which is nonsense) or his protesting of racial violence by police. Many NFL owners are probably racist--look at how many once publicly supported our White Supremacist-in-Chief (we'll get to him). But that's not why they blackballed Kaepernick.

Imagine, if you will, that the NFL as a business and organization is the enforcement tool of the team owners, with Rodger Goodell as the czar of uneven and arbitrary punishment. Since there's no video of Kap punching a woman in the face, Goodell can't do what Donald Trump wants him to do and suspend Kaepernick, along with everyone else taking a knee during the National Anthem. Instead, the owners decided simply not to hire him. Kap opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers last year, and he's still at home watching the games every Sunday instead of helping a team win.

Up until Week 3 this season, the NFL and its team owners didn't want players protesting at all. That's why Kap isn't playing. The owners and Goodell can't have people protesting everything all the time. What happens when NFL wives show up at games and start beating themselves over the head with two-by-fours to protest their husbands' brains getting turned to mush by playing in the NFL? People are already troubled by the NFL because of CTE, (and the NFL's attempt to cover up the research) and many others are now boycotting NFL games because of players peacefully protesting.

What if Goodell's seemingly random punishments for players beating up their girlfriends and smoking joints isn't random? What if he sows uncertainty on purpose? If players don't know how they'll be punished, they won't risk acting out or speaking up, or besmirching the NFL's brand in any way.

Then Week 3 happened. Sure, plenty of players, such as the Seahawks' Bennett, have been constantly vocal about police brutality, but there was nothing in the league on the same scale of the spectacle we saw in Week 3 or the original spectacle of Kap taking a knee for the first time.

Donald Trump inadvertently gave the NFL a gift when he called its players SOBs and called for suspensions. All of a sudden, the owners had an opportunity to bury Kap for good. Because Trump forced them into the fray with his tweets, the owners went to bat for their players. They took knees next to them on the field. Even Jerry Jones got his suit pant dirty by taking a knee on Monday Night Football. Even though some NFL owners send Christmas cards to the Trump family every year (metaphorically, unless Robert Kraft actually sends them Christmas cards), the NFL has no unholy allegiance to Trump.


When you were watching the National Anthems before the games in Week 3, how many times was Kaepernick mentioned? How many times did any of the broadcasters mention the cause of the original National Anthem protests? I didn't hear many mentions either. I didn't watch all the games, but I didn't hear any mention of police brutality last Sunday. The NFL turned Kap's protest into a spectacle that missed the point.

Instead of trying to suppress the protests sweeping the league, the NFL joined them, and by doing so, it changed Kap's protest into a sideshow. Everyone's blown away by the sight of billionaire owners joining their players on the field in solidarity, but no one remembers what the players were protesting to begin with. Instead of solidarity against unarmed black teenagers getting gunned down in the streets, kneeling for the National Anthem in Week 3 became a show of solidarity against the President, who made it easy by calling the players names and trying to tell the owners what to do.
Some players around the league will continue to sit, kneel, and lock arms for the rest of the season. It's okay in the NFL's eyes to do so now, because they've shifted the protest to Trump, an easy target and now a common enemy.

But as Kap, Bennett, and others know, the real enemy is the systemic racism that infects all aspects of American life, especially law enforcement.

I doubt the NFL and its owners care at all about police brutality. What they do care about is keeping their power. Athletes have more media access and therefore more power than ever before. In order to keep control and keep their tight grip on the lion's share of the billions of dollars the NFL generates every year, they have to instill fear in the players. Blackballing Kap is a warning to other players: step out of line and you'll be out of work and off the field. The owners neutralized Kap's protest by joining in and shifting the focus. They did it not because they have vested interests in police brutality, they did it to try and wrestle a bit of their power back from the players.

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