10 years later, Colin Kaepernick says the NFL is still ‘actively blackballing’ him
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The former 49ers quarterback says he believes the league continues to target players who protested alongside him.
A decade after Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, the former NFL quarterback says he still wants nothing to do with the league.
In a new interview with NBC News, Kaepernick said he has not watched an NFL game since the 2016 season, when his protest thrust him into the center of a national debate over race, policing and patriotism.
“I’m not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well,” Kaepernick said. “I watch college football.”
The comments come as Kaepernick reflects on the 10th anniversary of the protest that effectively ended his NFL career.
Kaepernick and then-San Francisco 49ers teammate Eric Reid began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to call attention to racial injustice and police brutality. Kaepernick famously explained at the time that he would not “stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color.”
After the 2016 season, Kaepernick became a free agent and was never signed by another NFL team. He and Reid later filed a grievance accusing NFL owners of colluding to keep them out of the league. The dispute was settled in 2019.
Kaepernick remains convinced that his exclusion was not simply a matter of football.
“There’s not a definitive moment that I would point to,” he said, questioning how a quarterback who had recently led the 49ers to a Super Bowl could go from being an NFL starter to unable to secure another opportunity.
The NFL has denied collusion allegations. In response to Kaepernick’s latest comments, the league said the issues he and other players raised “remain important” and pointed to more than $575 million in contributions through its social justice initiative, Inspire Change.
Kaepernick, however, remains unconvinced.
“I don’t think the NFL has materially changed. None of their actions show that,” he said.
Rather than focusing on whether his football career will be remembered, Kaepernick said he is more interested in the work he can do now.
“What I think about is what are the areas that I can do work that I think are going to have an impact and help us move towards that future together,” he said.
His memoir, “The Perilous Fight,” is scheduled for release Sept. 15 — offering Kaepernick another opportunity to tell the story of a protest that changed both his life and the NFL.