NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he wishes “we had listened earlier” to what Colin Kaepernick was trying to bring to attention when he began kneeling for the national anthem in 2016.
Goodell was asked about former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho’s video series, “Uncomfortable conversations with a black man,” what he would say in a public apology to Kaepernick.
Goodell responded by regretting the lack of dialogue with the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, saying the league would benefit from a conversation with Kaepernick.
“We had invited him several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue,” Goodell said in the video posted Sunday. ‘I wish we had the benefit of it. We never did it. And we would absolutely benefit from it. ‘
Goodell also said that players who kneel “do not go over the flag” and that their intentions are “mischaracterized”.
“These are not people who are unpatriotic. They are not disloyal. They are not against our army,” Goodell said. “In fact, many of those boys were in the army, and they’re a military family. And what they’re trying to do is exercise their right to pay attention to something that needs to be fixed. And that wrong view of who they were and what they did was the thing that really gnawed at me. “
In June, Goodell and the NFL released a video on behalf of the league for not paying them for not doing a better job of listening to players’ concerns about race inequality. Goodell told Acho that he hoped it was the death of George Floyd, while in Minneapolis police in May people realized what players were protesting and that he regretted that the league did not do a better job of supporting those protests.
“… There we have to listen first,” Goodell said. “And that’s where we need to be with them, understand and figure out what we can do as the NFL.”
In an interview with Mike Greenberg for ESPN’s The Return of Sports special in June, Goodell said he supports and encourages teams to sign Kaepernick. The 32-year-old has not played since the 2016 season, when he knelt down as a member of the 49ers during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality.
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