On ESPN's First Take talk show Friday, Will Cain asked Stephen A. Smith who will be signed first as an NFL quarterback: Johnny Manziel or Colin Kaepernick. Smith picked Manziel and said that after all the damage Kaepernick has done to himself and the league, drunks could be signed before him. Co-host Max Kellerman argued that the prevailing opposition to Kaepernick by "old white men" could shift as it once did for Muhammad Ali and also because this is an election year.
Smith (at left in photo) doesn't believe an NFL team will sign either Manziel, who hasn't played in the league since 2015, or Kaepernick, skipped over in the free agent market during the past year. Kaepernick is a huge threat to the NFL, especially since the protests of 2017 he inspired inflicted great harm on the league. Manziel, with his self-destructive history of drinking and partying, is only a threat to himself, the ESPN talker said.
Kaepernick has, in Smith's view, contaminated the league and insulted it to a point that drastically impacted the bottom line. Kaepernick has also sued the NFL, alleging collusion is keeping him out of the league. Last week, he attended the deposition of Houston Texans' owner Bob McNair and wore a t-shirt bearing the name of Kunta Kinte, of Roots fame. This prompted a spot-on analysis by Smith:
"Kunta Kinte was an individual and a slave who repeatedly resisted slavery on the part of an American owner, born in like 1750, at the time, that is what his character was depicted as. So essentially what you have is a situation where Colin Kaepernick is basically treating himself as an enslaved individual, not somebody who's protesting against police brutality, not somebody who's protesting against racial oppression from a societal perspective. Now he shows up to a deposition against an NFL owner implying and invoking slavery.
"You are not coming back into the National Football League when you do that. That is a direct assault on the National Football League and directly alludes to jeopardizing their bottom line. They are not going for that. They'll take a bunch of broke, drunk Johnny Manziel and everybody else in-between. They'll take Johnny Manziel, Josh Gordon and anybody else they find -- I'm not implying they're drunk or anything like that. I'm just saying that you can be the worst that you have heard of Johnny Manziel, the worst that you have heard of Josh Gordon, the worst that you have heard about anybody else. And an NFL owner would take one of those guys on their team before they take a player who is trying to invoke slavery aimed in their direction, particularly feeding off of the season that they just had where ratings and revenue were compromised. There is no way that they're going for that with Colin Kaepernick, as far as I can tell."
Kellerman (at right in photo) responded to Smith, saying:
Kellerman also complained about the lack of diversity in the NFL with its 32 "old white men" gate-keeper owners (Jacksonville's owner is actually Muslim). He disputed whether Kaepernick or the anti- response to Kaepernick is affecting the NFL's declining bottom line. (Which is saying the same thing, Max.) It's an election year, he asserts, and this could result in a pro-Kaepernick shift."Muhammad Ali went through this" and "was driven out of boxing. And then the winds shifted direction and suddenly and then I believe that also had an effect on the way the Supreme Court voted on Ali and certainly the way the public saw him. And suddenly the winds changed and he was perceived very differently and he got his license back and he went on to continue his career as the greatest of all time. Not that Colin Kaepernick is Muhammad Ali, but I do believe if one of them is to be back in the league, in the league, I believe it will be Kaepernick before Manziel because he's better than Johnny Manziel, because Colin Kaepernick has quarterbacked a team to the Super Bowl. Because he's clearly and by far the best quarterback who doesn't have a job right now, and everyone's starved for a quarterback, if not as a starter, at least as a backup. And as of right now, you're right, the way things are right now he's not gonna get a job, but who says things will stay that way?"
Smith shifted gears and said Kaepernick's "message was hijacked by the president of the United States — we all know that, we get that, and that part was definitely wrong. The owners are dealing with the residual impact of the president successfully hijacking that message.” Kaepernick is now pushing back against this and that's another reason why he won't get back in the NFL, Smith said.
Cain asked Smith if Kaepernick even wants back in the NFL, adding "You wear a shirt like that, is he retaining any hope or expectation to be in the NFL?"
Smith replied: “I think that he loves the fact that he has been martyred and he’s more preoccupied with that than being an NFL quarterback. I’m not saying he doesn’t want to be an NFL quarterback, I’m saying that doesn’t appear to be his priority more than being martyred for the position that he’s taken. He’s enjoying this."
For once, a large segment of alienated American football fans have something they can agree on with Kaepernick. They enjoy this radical being an unwanted free agent and out of football.
