Colin Kaepernick Reemerges and Tries to Cash in on Playing the Victim
Colin Kaepernick is back on television because he has a book to sell.
The memoir, “The Perilous Fight,” lands Sept. 15. NBC News gave him a long interview to promote it, calling the decade since he knelt “unfinished business.”
He will sit with Lester Holt and appear on “Today.” That is a media tour, not a comeback.
Kaepernick still says the NFL is “actively blackballing” him. He says he has not watched a league game since he left. He works out at 4:30 a.m. as if a roster spot were waiting.
Roger Goodell has said for years he does not believe Kaepernick was blackballed and that clubs make their own calls.
Here is the part the myth skips.
Kaepernick was a streaky, below-average quarterback by the time the anthem fight swallowed the story. He last played in 2016.
The league tried to put him in front of all 32 teams in 2019. He walked away from that workout the morning it was scheduled, citing a waiver.
Then he staged his own session. Teams treated it like what it looked like: a man who wanted the narrative more than the job.
That is not a secret handshake among owners. That is a player with rust, a circus, and no recent tape refusing the one clean look the league offered.
Football teams exist to win on Sunday. A backup who arrives with cameras, lawsuits, and a lecture is not a bargain. He is a week of practice lost.
Kaepernick told NBC he does not want black kids to think “if you fight for black folks, it’s over for you.” Fair enough as a personal worry. It is not an explanation for why no general manager has used a roster spot on him for 10 seasons.
He chose the posture. He chose the interviews. He chose to skip the 2019 tryout. He chose a memoir-and-manifesto over another offseason in someone’s quarterback room.
None of that makes him a victim. It makes him a brand.
Americans can argue about police and protest without pretending a fading dual-threat quarterback was Tom Brady with a conscience. He was not.
The book will find its buyers.
The victim act will find its clips.
What it will not find is an NFL team willing to blow up a locker room so Colin Kaepernick can keep saying the league is the reason he does not play.
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