One of the most disturbing trends in political media in the age of social media is the automatic, uncontested repetition of any lie, no matter how egregious. Politician A can say the most obvious untruth, and the majority of political media will throw the direct quote up on their accounts without the slightest hint of contention, fact-checking, or blowback. It’s an easy way to get clicks, and a very bad way to cover, say, a Presidential administration.
When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently sat down with former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho in Acho’s “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” video series, Goodell was asked to express what he would now say to Colin Kaepernick, who has not played in the league since the end of the 2016 season despite his obvious qualifications to do so. Kaepernick’s pre-game protests, and his calls for an end to police brutality, are commonly and obviously cited as the reasons why.
“I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to,” Goodell responded.
Goodell then expressed regret at how the increased social awareness of today’s NFL player has been cast incorrectly by many upset observers.
“What our players are doing is being mischaracterized. These are not people who are unpatriotic. They’re not disloyal. They’re not against our military. What they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed. That misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me.”
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: The National Anthem Protest- PT. 1
NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & I discuss Colin Kaepernick & the protests during the national anthem that polarized America. pic.twitter.com/PcL02732ys
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) August 23, 2020
Well, here’s the thing about that. Goodell got his pull quote around the Twitterverse in record time, and most people didn’t push back on it. It’s a great quote, after all — the guy in charge of the league that blacklisted a player for his political beliefs sees the light! — but in the end, all it is, is talk.
In what we might call the post-George Floyd era, it is expedient, convenient, and profitable for those in charge of the NFL to claim solidarity with its players. But where was this solidarity from the Commissioner when Kaepernick was first saying what he was saying, and knowingly putting his career on the line to do so?
In June, 2017, Goodell insisted that Kaepernick was not being blackballed, saying that the NFL is all about who can do the job.
“[All teams] want to get better,” Goodell told Andrea Kremer of the NFL Network back then. “And if they see an opportunity to get better as a football team, they’re going to do it. They’re going to do whatever it takes to make their football team better. So those are football decisions. They’re made all the time. I believe that if a football team feels that Colin Kaepernick, or any other player, is going to improve that team, they’re going to do it.”
Yeah, well… not so much. The teams that overlooked Kaepernick in favor of huckleberries like Nathan Peterman, Trevor Siemian, Case Keenum, Tom Savage, and Kyle Allen might disagree with this theory, given the right amount of truth serum.
And in December, 2017, Goodell went on CNBC and said this about the matter:
“We’ve always invited Colin to come over,” Goodell said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “He’s welcome to come over and meet at any point and time. We had an open door on that. There was some meeting set up with the player’s coalition, and they were invited by the player’s coalition.”
Asked flat-out if Kaepernick was being blackballed, Goodell said, “Each and every club’s got to make those decisions… They make those decisions based on a lot of factors that are best for their football team. And when they do that, that’s what’s in the best interest.”
Squawk box, indeed. And quite disingenuous given what history has shown about a quarterback who could barely get a tryout, much less a real opportunity to compete for a starting job, despite throwing 16 touchdowns and four interceptions in 2016 for a 2-14 49ers team that had the league’s worst offensive roster, and Bad Chip Kelly in charge of it.
In January, 2019, at his “State of the League” press conference, Goodell continued, and thus amplified, the lie.
“I’ve said it many times — privately, publicly — that our clubs are the ones that make decisions on players that they want to have on their roster…I think if a team decides that Colin Kaepernick or any other player can help their team win, that’s what they’ll do. They want to win, and they make those decisions individually in the best interest of their club.”
Riiiiight. This was after a 2018 season in which the Buffalo Bills gave Nathan Peterman a four-game opportunity in which Peterman may well have been the worst quarterback in NFL history (adjusted for era, of course). There were NFL teams clearly more interested in avoiding Kaepernick than winning games, and it wasn’t just the Bills.
In 2019, the NFL assembled a hasty opportunity for Kaepernick at the Falcons’ facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia. The idea was that NFL teams could watch Kaepernick work out and get an honest assessment of his abilities. The workout was altered when Kaepernick’s representatives asked that media be allowed to attend and film the event, and were told that this was not going to happen. Ultimately, Kaepernick put on a show in front of a skeleton crew of observers at a high school field about an hour from the Falcons’ home.
The NFL had given Kaepernick minimal notice of the workout. The NFL set the workout for a Saturday, when most NFL shot-callers are at college games — as opposed to a Tuesday, the standard day for free agent workouts. Kaepernick was not informed of the names of the league-provided receivers he was to throw to in the league’s version of this workout, leading Kaepernick to bring his own guys. And the media blackout was highly interesting, given that the NFL would film Goodell feeding his dog if the NFL thought it could make money from the exercise.
Still, Kaepernick put on a show, and made it clear that he was able to help a team if given the opportunity. He also showed that he was still unafraid to take a stand… which, back then, was still a Bad Idea in the NFL’s collective eyes.
“It’s important that y’all are here,” Kaepernick said to a group of reporters and supporters after the workout. “Y’all been attacked for the last three years; y’all continue to be attacked. We appreciate what y’all do, we appreciate you being here today, we appreciate the work you do for the people in telling the truth. That’s what we want in everything.
“I’ve been ready for three years. I’ve been denied for three years. We all know why. I came out here today and showed it in front of everybody. We have nothing to hide. So, we’re waiting for the 32 owners, the 32 teams, Roger Goodell, all of them, to stop running. Stop running from the truth; stop running from the people. We’re out here. Ready to play, ready to go anywhere. My agent Jeff Nalley is ready to talk to any team. I will interview with any team at any time. I’ve been ready, I’m staying ready, and I continue to be ready.
“To all the people who came out here today to support — I appreciate y’all, I love y’all. To the people that aren’t here, I’m thinking of you, I appreciate your support from where you are. We’ll continue to give you updates as we hear. We’ll be waiting to hear from Roger Goodell, the NFL, the 32 teams — we’ll let you know if we hear from them.”
Kaepernick never heard enough to continue his career. He had already won a settlement from the league in his collusion lawsuit — his insistence that the league had conspired to deny him a job he was qualified to do — and here he was, still trying to prove the point.
The point is still proven in Kaepernick’s case, and it remains unproven in Goodell’s. If what was happening to players exercising their right to peaceful protests really “gnawed at” Goodell as he told Acho, what happened to Kaepernick never would have happened. What happened to Panthers safety Tre Boston, one of the best deep coverage players in the league over the last half-decade, wouldn’t have happened — Boston wouldn’t have had to play on a bunch of lowball one-year deals with different teams because he wanted to protest, and the word got out.
“In 2016, we saw a world that… even with peaceful protesting with Kap, we saw a world that didn’t understand, and was not willing to listen or hear what we were trying to say,” Boston told Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network in June. “It was hard times. We were screaming back then, ‘Help.’ We need help. How can we help out our community so that we’re one? And it’s tough when you hear from the top down that the people who watch football come here to get away from that stuff, even though we had protesting going on the day of the game. So, to hear open-ended promises — them telling us to do nothing, we’ll get you in the community. Then, the next week comes around, the week after that comes around, and nothing’s been said to you. Nothing’s been brought up to put you in the community. They did what they wanted.”
“You know, it’s not like that anymore. I’ve been assured, when I first came back, that it wasn’t like that anymore. I’ve had phone calls with owners and our coaches now, who have called me and told me how much they appreciate what I’m doing, and that they would love to help. Tepper calling me and telling me how much he appreciates that I was out there with the guys. It’s a 180 from what we used to be. When I was thinking about coming back, I wanted to know — did I have the stability in my job to be who I am as a man, as a black man, as a very intelligent University of North Carolina alum? They assured me that they believed in everything I believed in, I was allowed to be myself, and I was allowed to stand up for things that were right.”
That Boston and players like him are now “allowed” to stand up for things that are right only means that the NFL understands the political expediency of that concept. If the NFL had truly believed this all along, and if Roger Goodell had believed this all along, Goodell wouldn’t have parroted the meritocracy lie for as long as he did.
And that, along with Colin Kaepernick’s continued status of Qualified but Unemployed, make Goodell’s words now ring utterly hollow. A lie is a lie, no matter how it’s framed.