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.
