Colin Kaepernick, Black Athletes, and HBCUs.

by Staff August 6, 2017 9 Comments News Opinion Sports Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) The Miami Dolphins’ recent signing of former Chicago Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler seems to have provided a tipping point in the support of Colin Kaepernick. It feels like a slap in our black faces. The Dolphins’ un-retirement of a mediocre proven perennial loser quarterback in favor of a Super Bowl veteran free-agent, in his prime, and perfectly healthy Colin Kaepernick was at least the tipping point for this writer and avid Pittsburgh Steelers fan. I hate that I will have to sit out a season in which I fully expect my team to compete for a Championship.

I hate that I will miss Martavis Bryant’s return and Antonio Brown’s display of what he can do without double-teams, but I will. I will not watch a single NFL game in this coming season until Colin Kaepernick is signed to an NFL contract. This protest by the NFL’s white owners is tantamount to a post whipping in front of the slaves. It’s to set an example against resistance to the denial of civil rights.

The Pittsburgh Steelers are the ideal landing site for Kaepernick. Ironically for me, my favorite team is a storied franchise with a Super Bowl champion black Head Coach, a well understood need for a solid backup quarterback, a team owner who instituted the Rooney Rule, and a history of acquiring at least one controversial player in the form of Michael Vick, who didn’t even bother to offer Kaepernick a workout. They were willing to hire a convicted animal abuser, but not someone who stood up for the rights of the very people whom they employ as a franchise. They are willing to employ a thrice accused alleged rapist in Ben Roethlisberger, but not a man who took a knee in silent protest of police brutality.

I am not alone in my protest. The latest slap in the face seems to be a tipping point for more people than me as I am witnessing my Facebook friends and family either committing to not watching the NFL or openly beginning to consider that commitment. Applying pressure to the white owners of the NFL is an appropriate and affirmative action, but we should not limit the momentum of this movement, we should further it. We should send a shock wave down through the ranks that this will not be tolerated and we should begin to organize to form our own ownership groups of a league that we control. In my opinion, this should begin in the college ranks.

Imagine if every top African-American recruit in 2018 commits to play football, basketball, baseball, and hockey at an HBCU. Imagine then if the HBCUs refuse any and all support and/or administration from the NCAA. Imagine if they then negotiate their own television contracts with Revolt, Centric, or YouTube to broadcast their own games. Imagine if they then support their athletes by offering revenue sharing deferred until and conditional upon their graduation. Imagine if they offered better per diems and life support to their student athletes backed by the black donor class. Now imagine these athletes being drafted by leagues formed by majority black ownership groups when they enter professional sports. Imagine LeBron James’ Clutch Sports platform being the primary commentary outlet instead of ESPN or FS1. Imagine King Colin as the President of the football league instead of begging for a job.

I call upon all of us to rally. I call upon all of us to take our talented sons and daughters, coordinate with each other and to form Fab Five style Superteams at our HBCUs. The famous and talented group of Michigan high-schoolers turned University of Michigan Superteam could have just as easily committed to Howard University or Lincoln University and could have easily and instantly raised the prestige and profile of our storied institutions. They could have turned them into Division I contenders instantly. I call upon black America to make this happen in 2018 and I call upon the current group of star collegiate groups to transfer now; form Superteams now. Television revenue alone would change the course of HBCUs forever.

Staff Writer; Asani Akida

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Asani Akida says:
July 4, 2020 at 11:33 pm
…and now…
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Kevin says:
August 9, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Wow……..
This article is a joke. This America hating, below average QB should not even be talked about.
Race baiting and not calling things honestly. Very sad. He can’t go away soon enough.
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ythoodrat says:
August 8, 2017 at 12:20 pm
I have to admit that I thought of something like that when checking out SEC football depending on black athletes but representing states who always vote Republican even when the Republicans are trying to be slick about targeted disenfranchisement of voting rights.
But, with Kaepernick. It seems to me that he has got his nose wide open to this girlfriend who may have manipulated him into being an activist. I doubt he will ever be a winning QB again as long as he has his nose wide open to the girl who used to bounce with Aldon Smith.
Colin, biologically mixed race, adopted by white parents, never exposed to living in the neighborhoods with the most challenges regarding police and community relations. All of a sudden his Saudi Arabian American girlfriend whose fashion sense would get her imprisoned in Saudi Arabia talks him into an ineffective means of protest that does nothing to solve the problem he claims to care about.
A QB needs to be a leader and Kaepernick has his head in the clouds and lets his girlfriend run his show. She put her message in his head and sacrificed the athletic career of Colin the ingenue.
Kaepernick is a better QB than nearly all of the backup QBs in training camp, but this blackballing is not 100% the stand he took. With a lot of the teams, it is more than 50% that he never cared about taking any political stand until he let this girlfriend run his show.
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Josiah Rosette says:
August 7, 2017 at 11:10 am
Very interesting article. I agree with the premise that we should own our own. However, I think that if we want top athletes to go to HBCUs, then HBCUs need to show a commitment into investing into these athletes as close to on par with mid-majors PWI. I went to PWI that is considered a blue-blood of college football, I know first hand that these schools invest a lot of money in these players. Also, the alumni and boosters invest a lot of money into the school and athletic funds. So my question is how are HBCUs going to compete? Are they going increase their recruiting budget? Is their a black millionaire that will lend is private jet to the coach to go see players? Are we as black people going to attend the games? When a PWI offers the coach three times his salary, are HBCUs going to raise the money to match or exceed? With the new league, how are we going to be able to match the salaries of the NBA or NFL? How is the new league going to get over the stigma, that it is an inferior product?
Basically, it comes down to economics. People are going to go where the money is, and I cant blame the players. I think it is easy to tell someone to make a sacrifice when you are not the one walking away from potential millions of dollars
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HR says:
August 7, 2017 at 3:35 am
This is hilarious stupidity of an article to defend Colin. He’s an America hater and substandard player. Good riddance to him. Perhaps North Korea or Iran will recruit him. He would fit right in.
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Reality? says:
August 6, 2017 at 11:57 pm
Well written article and while I am in total agreement with the thesis of your argument it’s built on a false dichotomy meaning that there are only two options for a solution to the current issue that America faces (not just the NFL). The fact that people (unlike “jd” which refers to an obvious group as “those, them, or they” because God forbid that you have to be of a certain nationality or race to recognize a set a factsthag point to a certain theme in this case being systematic racism) are both unwilling to recognize that this about more than just playing football and to deem someone as “un-American” for functioning within his constitutional rights in silence. He didn’t destroy or demean the flag, say anything derogatory that serve this country in the armed forces, or state anything but the obvious that there are some serious issues that needed to be addressed. I believe the course of action you proposed would definitely shake things up and create an immediate demand for change but not only has history proven that we as a people group are have been programmed to stay in line and not challenge the “norm” (generally) but it has also proven that when we did, we were successful, our excellence was seen feared and destroyed (black Wall Street). I won’t be watching or attending and was looking forward to seeing beast mode in action for the silver and black… we need more Richard Sherman’s not afraid to speak out on his behalf!
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jd says:
August 6, 2017 at 10:57 pm
There are FAR more people who don’t want this anti-American playing football. This has nothing to do about race, but no, like always they have to play their race card to demand their way through life.
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Eric Williams says:
August 6, 2017 at 10:16 pm
Great article I think if all the black athletes would branch off and form their own Football league it would send a huge message to them. It will never happen tho because they too depended on the NFL millions
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tarik kaintuck says:
August 6, 2017 at 10:09 pm
Great piece and we’ll see soon enough the level of seriousness this boycott will be.
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