Kaepernick Says NFL Owners Blackballed Him Over Politics, Citing Millions in Trump Donations
Updated
Updated · Fox News · Sep 14
Kaepernick Says NFL Owners Blackballed Him Over Politics, Citing Millions in Trump Donations
3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Sep 14
Summary
On ABC’s “The View,” Colin Kaepernick said NFL teams shut him out after 2016 for political reasons, arguing the league’s response to his anthem protest showed where owners stood.
Millions of dollars in donations to Donald Trump and his administration were central to that claim, Kaepernick said, alongside what he called owners’ use of power after he knelt against police brutality.
Kaepernick, now 10 years removed from the start of the protest, said no team signed him after he opted out of his 49ers contract in March 2017; his collusion case against the NFL ended in a confidential settlement.
The former quarterback also said the league is about 70% Black and argued players could force change quickly if they unified, even suggesting one weekend refusal to play would stop games.
A decade after his initial protest, is an athlete's exile driven more by their message or the threat they pose to institutional power?
Could a united weekend boycott by professional athletes actually force a multi-billion dollar sports league to completely restructure its power dynamics?