Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who made a spectacle of himself by taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem during the last Football season, is having trouble signing with a team as a free agent. The Mercury News suggests that the reticent of team owners to include him goes beyond just business considerations.
To be sure some think that Kaepernick is past his prime as a player or at least the length of his remaining Professional Football career is somewhat limited. Others do not want to put up with the political controversy his presence on the field will engender.
Professional football is a business, and a team’s bottom line depends on the good will of the fans. Making people want to throw things on the field or yell at the TV because of the behavior of one of the players is bad for business.
However, some team owners genuinely hate Kaepernick for what he did. They also want to use the ruination of his career to make him an example so that their players will never think of emulating his behavior.
Kaepernick has already become a classic case of Nemesis meeting hubris. He clearly had not thought things through when he brought politics onto the football field by refusing to stand for the National Anthem. The vast majority of football fans did not take his gesture as a protest against injustice, but rather as a slight against the United States itself, a country that allowed Kaepernick to prosper as few human beings can do.
Many did not appreciate the introduction of any politics in a game that they watch to escape the cares of the world, which included a continuous election that still resonates months after it occurred. Kaepernick’s promise to behave from now on is a matter of too little too late.
Kaepernick’s fate should provide a cautionary tale indeed.
It is bad for the brand of any celebrity to deliberately set about offending their fan base. Any who do this have to expect potentially career-ending consequences. Kaepernick will now have the rest of his life to mull that lesson.
