It's Confirmed: NFL Owners Blackballed Kaepernick

Whether it's fact or fiction, word is that when the Mafia whacked a dude, they had a logical explanation.

Nothing personal. It's just business.

Of course, the whackee mighta taken the matter quite differently, considering the outcome.

If there was any real news at all in the revelation that the NFL decided Colin Kaepernick was bad for business, it was confirmation that each damn owner came to that conclusion individually.

 

Joe Lockhart came to the NFL as its Executive Vice President of Communications in 2016 and left on amicable terms to spend more time with his family. OG thus has no ax to grind.

But he's got a conscience, and in light of recent developments on the national scene, he decided now was the time to free his soul.

 

That announcement's better late than never, especially after the Commish so heavily stepped on his dick with this very white reaction to what's happening out in the streets:

 

It didn't take long for the broadsides to hit, many with an obvious response:

Colin Kaepernick asked the NFL to care
about the lives of black people
and they banned him from their platform.

               -- Michael-Shawn Dugar

According to Lockhart, it wasn't as if The Shield was calling the shots. Owner after owner didn't want to be the one to step up, citing in one instance that Kaepernick's presence would cut season ticket purchases by 20%.

Kaepernick's agent even sent out a fact sheet in an attempt to cut throught the morass, but that didn't work, either, just like the disjointed private workout last year that only succeeded in becoming a circus.

 

Back in 1975, the Cleveland Indians took a chance when they hired Frank Robinson as the first black manager in the four major North American sports' modern era.

MLB's other owners didn't particularly consider this a courageous act. Instead, they raised their eyebrows because Cleveland put itself in a position where it might have to be the team to fire the first black manager, and that would be a PR disaster.

In a sense, this is also the hurdle NFL owners believes to be the case if one of them signs Kaepernick now. Even if dude gets beaten out for a roster spot, no owner wants his team to be painted into the corner that cutting him would likely cause.

 

Odds are most of The Shield's owners had to have balls of steel to become the billionaires they are, but somehow, they morph into a flock of sheep when they buy their franchises.

Lockhart and others may be calling for one of them -- like the Vikings -- to sign Kaepernick, but when viewed in the harsh light of cold reality, that'll be a tough ask.

• Dude's been outta the game since 2016,
• Not even the likes of Cam Newton has found a place to land yet, and
• What'll this look like to the player who gets cut to make room for him?

 

The NFL's already screwed dude over, and un-screwing him could likely only happen in a parallel universe.

Kaepernick's just 32 now, but he's lost four prime earning years as it is, and it can't be forgotten that he'd ended his time with the 49ers on the bench, losing his starter's job to Blaine Gabbert.

Granted, that's enough to think the fix was already in.

 

In that respect, the owners now are in a fix of a different kind and one of their own making.

Unless a club steps up and Kaepernick turns into Tom Brady 2.0 this season, it can't win no matter what it does.

 

All of which puts Kaepernick in the same position he's been since 2017.

And knowing what the league owners did to him back then doesn't make the situation any better.

For anyone.

Dude's probably stuck being a football martyr who answered to a higher cause.