Roy Exum
Colin Kaepernick was far-and-away one of the most fascinating guys in the NFL before he became world famous for his decision not to stand for the National Anthem. The San Francisco quarterback, whose teammates call “Kap,” has been somewhat of an activist all of his life and, in mid-August, when he started wearing some ugly socks to practice that had designs of pigs wearing police hats on them, few were surprised in the land of lulus.
The home field of the 49ers is actually in Santa Clara and there the police bit back this week. It was revealed yesterday that the police union had indeed sent a strongly-worded letter to the 49ers that if they don’t hold the heavily-tattooed Kaepernick accountable, “it could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities."
“The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officers' Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their working environments free of harassing behavior,” the letter read, and with the season opener against the Rams a week from tomorrow, its apparent push will come to shove pretty quickly.
San Francisco has four quarterbacks on the roster, with Blaine Gabbert now penciled as the starter, but the franchise is suddenly under intense heat for Kaepernick’s personal agenda. While coach Chip Kelly is believed to want “Kap” as his primary backup, his stand for what he believes is right has reportedly roiled the front office and one NFL executive has reportedly called the University of Nevada product a “traitor.”
The child of a 19-year-old white mother who was destitute at the time and a black father who left before Colin was born, he was adopted almost immediately by a white couple after the Kaepernicks had lost two sons to a rare heart disorder. The family moved to Turlock, Calif., from Fond du Lac, Wis., when Colin was 4 and he became a sensational athlete at Pitman High, where he was all-state in football, basketball and baseball as well as a 4.0 student.
His fastball was clocked at 96 MPH and he had various scholarship offers in both basketball and baseball but no colleges were interested in a 6-foot-5 quarterback who weighed only 170 pounds. A Nevada assistant football coach saw him completely dominate a high school basketball game – this despite a 102 fever -- so football coach Chris Ault took a chance on Kaepernick, fully believing the lanky pitcher would go in the baseball draft.
Kaepernick, who pitched two no-hitters and was 11-2 on the mound as a senior, was picked in the 43rd round by the Cubs but had a burning desire to play football. A redshirt freshman, he got his first playing time in the fourth game of the 2007 season and lit it up: 384 yards passing for 4 touchdowns in a 49-41 loss to Fresno.
The next week Nevada was a 26-point underdog to Boise but ESPN was there. Kaepernick and the Wolfpack went wild; he passed for 243 yards and 3 TDs while running for 177 yards and two more in a 69-67 four-overtime loss. The game was dubbed an “instant classic” by ESPN and is still shown by the network and in it you can hear Bill Curry call Kaepernick’s performance “the best by a red-shirt freshman I have ever seen.”
At Nevada he was twice named as the Player of the Year in the WAC and at San Francisco he’s passed for over 10,000 yards, becoming just the seventh quarterback to pass for over 10,000 for the same franchise. He took the 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2012, losing to the Ravens in a 34-31 thriller.
But now nobody’s talking about his football ability.
Rochelle Riley, writing in the Detroit Free Press, reminds us “that America was built on protests” and that “America is not a flag. Our flag is a symbol of a country that is both great … and flawed, as is clear by the daily lives of so many who struggle, who live in despair, who face discrimination and hatred and obstacles every day. That some would call attention to the need to fix that, to return to the mission to make America a place where every citizen has the right to pursue happiness is not something to be lambasted. It is something to be applauded.”
Riley quotes Jackie Robinson, the first black to play in the major leagues, “I cannot sing the National Anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know I am a black man in a white world.”
Bill Reiter from CBS Sports: “I take no pleasure in watching someone sit during the National Anthem, just as I take no pleasure watching someone burn the flag. And the cops-as-pigs socks are incendiary. But I do take deep satisfaction in being an American. It is a blessing and a deep stroke of luck to be citizens of this country. And one of the myriads that’s true is the right to burn the flag, to sit for that anthem, to talk kindly or with great rage about police brutality, to disagree on politics, or have to tolerate free speech that makes our skin crawl.”
Reiter’s brilliant essay also included this: “Colin Kaepernick plays in a league that has welcomed back players who have beaten their wives or girlfriends, beaten their sons, faced serious and legitimate accusations of rape, driven drunk, killed people while driving drunk, on and on it goes. And we want to use our moral outrage on this guy? Really?
“Many friends and former colleagues I've argued with on television have sat across me and publicly pushed for second chances for all or most of these examples,” he continued. “They've asserted that in America you get second chances, that mistakes are made, that accusations aren't facts and that sins aren't unforgivable. Fine. Then apply that same logic to a player who has done nothing wrong in the true sense of the word -- nothing illegal, nothing hurtful, nothing evil, nothing that damaged another human being -- to fight for a cause he believes in.
“He offended you? He offended a hallowed group? He did it as a form of protest over a topic that is heated, difficult, divisive, and ultimately too important to ignore?” asked Reiter. “What could be more American than that?”
And me? Roy Exum’s view? I am far too patriotic to ever show any disrespect for this nation I love. I am also white and unable to see through a black person’s eyes. I don’t know the fear and distrust others carry for our police officers so my first thought is that this is the wrong way to kindle a very necessary conversation. This is the wrong platform and that insults my adoration for America.
Personally, I wish Colin had taken issue with blacks killing blacks. I believe that is a far worse epidemic and why our black leaders remain silent is deeply and sadly disturbing to me. Our police are the first responders when a black person is shot yet Colin wears his cops-as-pigs socks? That’s horrible.
Yet as I read about all I could find on Colin Kaepernick, the more I genuinely liked the guy. He is a huge advocate for children, taking part in as many charities as he possibly can. Each of his many tattoos attest his deep Christianity and I admire his courage and his freedom to speak and act as he chooses.
I wish Colin had made Thursday’s pledge to give $1 million to charity before he sat through the National Anthem because to do so afterwards reminds me of damage control. I also wish he would grant his birth mother, now a nurse in Colorado, a personal visit and that he would get past the silly “traitorous” notion such a visit would be to his adoptive parents. (They want him to meet her.)
Finally, I wish someone would protest the hatred in this country. Blacks hate the cops, Tennessee fans boo in the first game, and Kaepernick gets death threats for what he believes. My goodness, the Stanford rapist was released after 90 days this week and Kaepernick even pushed that lout off the front page!
Everybody’s mad. The public majority loves calling Hillary a crook, our cartoonists are obsessed with Donald’s hair, Bob Corker is bringing outside senators to Tennessee to soak up even more money for nothing in return, and on it goes.
To paraphrase the CBS writer: What could be more American than that?
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“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, ‘You want free speech?’ Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”
-- from the movie, “An American President,” 1995
royexum@aol.com