NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he wished “we had listened earlier” to Colin Kaepernick when asked what he would say in an apology to the former 49ers quarterback who returned to the national spotlight in the middle of the country’s bill on racism.
“Well, the first thing I would say is, ‘I wish we had heard earlier, Kap, what you knelt down and what you were trying to get attention for,’ ‘Goodell said when asked by former linebacker and commentator Emmanuel Acho during an interview, shared on social media on Sunday, with the title “Uncomfortable conversations with a black man: the national anthem protest.”
Goodell admitted that the league had ‘invited [Kaepernick] in several times to have the conversation, ‘but’ we never did. ‘
He did not explain why that meeting did not take place.
The NFL in the past four years had been mostly silent when it came to Kaepernick, who has not played since 2016 after kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.
But that began to change after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, who urged NFL stars in June to ask the league to “listen to your players” and “racism and the systematic to deepen the oppression of black people. “
Just after the pressure of the league’s biggest names, including Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, Goodell replied, “We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong not to listen to NFL players before and encourage everyone speak out and protest peacefully. “
However, Goodell was reluctant to name 32-year-old Kaepernick.
Goodell later said he would “support” a team to sign Kaepernick, who continues to train in hopes of another chance.
Kaepernick jumped on the bandwagon to protest peacefully during the national anthem, and it has become the norm since sports returned from the coronavirus pandemic.
‘It’s not about the flag. The message here, and what our players are doing, is being mischaracterized, ”said Goodell. ‘These are not people who are unpatriotic, they are not disloyal, they are not against our army. In fact, many of those boys were in the Army, and they are a military family. What they were trying to do was exercise their right to bring attention to something that needed to be fixed. That traffic in who they were and what they were doing was something that really gnawed at me. ”
Kaepernick and the NFL reached an undisclosed settlement in February 2019 over his grammar against the league and owners.
The following season, Goodell and the league tried to arrange training for Kaepernick in what many saw as a publicity stunt for the league.
The training turned into a disaster when Kaepernick and the NFL disagreed on details, and only a few teams attended.
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