- Kaepernick says NFL offered him a role to lead social justice initiatives, which he rejected as collusion.
- Kaepernick argues Jay-Z's NFL partnership helped the league move past the police brutality protest.
- Kaepernick believes the NFL was searching for a prominent Black figure to end the controversy permanently.
Colin Kaepernick is reopening one of the most infamous chapters in the NFL’s recent history, and this time, Jay-Z is catching what some would call some very deserved heat.
In a new interview on the MeidasTouch Podcast to promote his new book The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick revisited the fallout from his decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. According to Kaepernick, NFL owners were not simply looking for a way to address the controversy. They were looking for a prominent Black person who could help make the national controversy disappear permanently.
Kaepernick pointed to a 2017 meeting between NFL owners and players, saying Patriots owner Robert Kraft referred to the protests as “the elephant in the room.” He says Bills owner Terry Pegula followed that conversation by saying, “We need a Black face to help us end this.” And let Kaepernick tell it, the league tried to make him that face first. He says the NFL offered him a major role leading the league’s social justice initiatives, an offer he rejected because he believed the league was conspiring and colluding against him. Kap says the NFL also approached the Players Coalition before eventually finding another prominent Black figure willing to work within its system.
In 2019, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation entered into a partnership with the NFL involving entertainment and the league’s Inspire Change social justice initiative. Jay-Z said at the time that society was “past kneeling” and needed to focus on “actionable items.” The partnership immediately drew intense criticism, particularly because Jay-Z had previously supported Kaepernick and had worn his jersey during a 2017 “Saturday Night Live” appearance and now seemed to be selling out the moment and the movement.
Kaepernick now argues that Jay-Z effectively filled the role NFL ownership had been searching for, helping redirect the conversation away from the protest itself and toward a more benign and toothless version of social justice.
That distinction is the whole damn ballgame.
Kaepernick’s argument is not simply that Jay-Z made a business deal. It is that the deal came at a moment when the NFL was desperately trying to move past a protest centered on police killings, incarceration and systemic racism. Nearly a decade later, Kaepernick clearly still believes that contrast says everything about who the NFL ultimately wanted representing its version of racial justice.
