Unpopular Opinion: Colin Kaepernick should get another chance in the NFL.

Colin Kaepernick, after getting unofficially kicked out of the NFL, should get another chance to live out his dream of being a starting quarterback.

Colin Kaepernick played college football at the University of Nevada where he won the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Offensive Player of the Year twice. He was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the second round of the 2011 NFL draft where he played for six years.

Kaepernick took over the starting job from Alex Smith in the middle of the 2012 season after Smith went down with an injury. That same season he went on to lead the team to a Super Bowl appearance. In 2013, he led them to an NFC championship appearance.

There is no question that the dude can play. He also has shown he has guts to stand up for what is right. The problem is in the way that he shows it, which has rubbed a lot of people, most importantly the NFL, the wrong way.

At the start of the 2016 season, Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem and continued to do so throughout the season. The reason behind kneeling was a form of protest police brutality and social injustice.

During the offseason, Kaepernick remained and remains a free agent. Multiple players joined him in kneeling during the season.

Kaepernick has gained a lot of attention, some good and some bad, ever since kneeling in that pre-season game.

I got to admit, the guy has some guts. He had to know that he would get some heat for what he was doing, most of which came from analysts and the media. Many of them believe that he remains unsigned to this day because of his political antics.

Whatever the reason, I think that he deserves another chance.

Second Chances

We all know the cliché saying, “life is full of second chances.” Well, if that’s true, then everyone should deserve them. The saying doesn’t go, “life is full of second chances except for …”

Plus, it’s not like he did anything wrong. There was nothing in his contract, to my knowledge, that prohibited him from kneeling during the National Anthem.

What it looked like to me was a classic case of the NFL saving face. Roger Goodell didn’t want people to view the NFL as this terrible organization that ignores police brutality and social inequality.

I could be wrong, but with cases like this in the past, the NFL goes to extensive lengths to make sure the public doesn’t view them in a negative light.

Just as I was writing this, I opened Instagram for a minute and the first thing that popped up was a picture of Kaepernick and a headline that said, “Breaking News.” I scrolled down to the caption of the post and read that Adam Schefter reported that the Las Vegas Raiders were going to hold a workout for Kaepernick.

Maybe the league is coming around to the idea of including him.

Free Speech

I took an ethics and legal issues class recently and this was always a topic of discussion. We looked at a lot of cases dealing with free speech and what constitutes as such.

We looked at cases in which people expressed themselves in several ways, but it almost always was deemed free speech. I.e. stepping on a flag, protesting with signs.

Most of these ways are controversial to some people, but people are entitled to express themselves the way they want to.

Ethically speaking, I think Kaepernick is within his rights as a US citizen to express himself as he wants to, even if that means kneeling during the National Anthem.

Whether we agree with it or not is our opinion, but the law is the law.

The First Amendment is a tricky thing because while some of us may not agree with the methods, this is the way Kaepernick has decided to exercise his rights.

We can’t argue the rights that we have as American citizens.

Standing Up

Think about all the influential people in American history, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Abraham Lincoln, just to name a few. What did they all have in common?

They always did what they thought was right, often without public approval.

We call these people bold, courageous and noble for what they did. Why do we then criticize Colin Kaepernick for standing up for what he believes?

Yes, his methods bring a lot of attention, but maybe that is the only people will listen.

If you have the platform, I say go for it. I think it’s great that athletes choose to use sports as their platform to create and inspire change.

Let’s not forget that Kaepernick brought attention to this issue before the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. If he felt as though it was a problem back then, imagine what he is thinking now.

Sources:

“Colin Kaepernick.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 May 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Kaepernick.