Colin Kaepernick suggests NFL hired Jay-Z to ‘subvert the protest’ around his controversy

Former San Francisco 49ers star Colin Kaepernick hinted that the NFL used Jay-Z to replace his presence in the league.

Kaepernick played in the NFL for six seasons with the 49ers. However, following Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during preseason games after civil unrest in the United States, his career changed.

After he became a free agent, Kaepernick went unsigned by any team in the NFL, after which he filed a grievance against NFL owners for colluding to keep him out of the league.

Colin Kaepernick claims NFL owners ‘filled the void’ he left by hiring Jay-Z

Speaking in an interview with the Meidas Touch, Colin Kaepernick discussed the role the NFL owners played in blackballing him from the league.

Kaepernick claimed that the NFL leveraged Jay-Z’s influence and status to replace him as the pre-eminent black voice associated with the NFL for their social justice initiatives.

“We see the NFL owners explicitly call this out in their players-owners meeting that happened in 2017. Coming out of that meeting, we have reports of Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, saying, ‘The elephant in the room is this kneeling and the protests. We need to address it.’

“Then you have Terry Pagula, who is the owner of the Buffalo Bills, on the back of that, coming out and saying, ‘We need a black face to help us end this.’

“We’re hearing very explicitly from the NFL owners and that oligarch class that, ‘We need a black face to help us subvert the protest, work counter to the people’s interests, and we’re in search of that.’ They tried it first with the players’ coalition.

“They tried it with me, directly, trying to offer me a major deal to lead their social justice initiatives while they’re actively blackballing me. To be clear, that was rejected…

“At the same time, we see Jay-Z step into that role, effectively fill the void that the NFL owners were looking for: that black face to subvert the protests…”

In 2019, just a few months after the league settled the grievance with Kaepernick, the NFL reached an agreement with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation group.

The agreement was multi-faceted, with Jay-Z and Roc Nation helping to curate the league’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and other entertainment endeavours, while also leading their newly launched social justice initiatives.

While Jay-Z’s philanthropic history predates his agreement with the NFL, many felt that the legendary rapper had leveraged his position as one of the genre’s greatest and one of the most powerful black figures in America to benefit himself and his associates.

Given that Kaepernick claimed that the NFL offered him the same role for the social justice initiatives as Jay-Z just months prior, this does provide a more cynical perspective on the NFL’s approach to reform.

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